Winter storm “Hannes” shuts Lapland airports and causes runway incidents at Kittilä

Severe Arctic weather branded as winter storm “Hannes” swept across Finnish Lapland on Saturday, 27 December, forcing Finavia to suspend all commercial traffic at the region’s three busiest airports—Kittilä, Ivalo and Rovaniemi—for almost seven hours. The decision was triggered by sustained cross-winds exceeding 20 m/s, heavy snow squalls and limited runway visibility, conditions that quickly exceeded the airports’ CAT II/III operating minima.

During the closure two separate runway-excursion incidents underscored the seriousness of the situation. At 16:05 local time a Swiss International Air Lines Airbus A220 arriving from Geneva veered off the taxiway at Kittilä and became stuck in a snowbank. Roughly an hour later a privately-operated Pilatus PC-12 slid into packed snow while repositioning for departure. No injuries were reported and both airframes remained largely undamaged, yet the incidents forced an extensive runway inspection and snow-removal operation that further delayed reopening.



Finavia said 28 arrivals and 26 departures were cancelled or diverted, affecting an estimated 6 800 passengers—many of them leisure visitors on peak-season charter packages. Aircraft unable to land in Lapland were rerouted to Oulu, Tromsø (Norway) and even Stockholm Arlanda, while south-bound flights returned to their points of origin. Hotel capacity in the resort towns of Levi and Saariselkä tightened rapidly as stranded travellers required extra nights of accommodation.

For corporates, the disruption highlights Lapland’s limited diversion infrastructure: only Oulu offers full-service handling for wide-body aircraft within a 400-kilometre radius. Travel managers with winter-season assignees or incentive groups are being advised to build longer layovers into itineraries and to include contingency hotel allocations in Oulu and Helsinki. Insurance providers say the incident is a timely reminder to verify that policies cover weather-related delays on both scheduled and charter flights.

Finavia and the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) have opened a joint investigation into the ground-handling procedures that preceded the excursions, focusing on de-icing intervals and real-time runway friction measurements. Preliminary findings are expected in early January and could lead to revised winter-operations guidance for all 20 Finavia-managed airports.