Lygg expands private airplane flights to general business travel in Nordic countries

As business travel resumes its pre-pandemic pace and employees push back on the hassle of commercial airlines, Lygg is redefining business travel by offering private flights at the price of commercial air travel. The regional air travel startup out of Finland is leveraging existing privately-owned aircraft assets and their pilots, coupled with car services, to deliver flight routes that take passengers from destinations underserved by traditional airlines to cities throughout Europe with door-to-door service. In January, Lygg began offering flight routes to and from Helsinki, Finland; Örebro, Sweden; Linköping, Sweden and Tallinn, Estonia, which started Monday, January 16, 2023.

The new flight paths milestone comes on the heels of record promotional and charter flights in 2022 to familiarize customers with Lygg’s offerings. From June last year, when operations began, Lygg has completed 52 flights to 17 destinations in 12 European countries.

Roope Kakäläinen, CEO and Co-Founder of Lygg, commented: “These new flight routes are a confirmation that the Lygg regional travel model is resonating with the business community. On the one hand, we are delivering traveler satisfaction with curb-to-aircraft seamless efficiencies that anticipate savings for companies. On the other hand, we are providing operators of the small aircraft asset class the possibility to see future flight hours and consequently predict their revenues. Happy customers, savings, profitability — that is a winning combination.”

The new city and country destinations offered by Lygg are linked with direct connection flights, planned and optimized through Lygg’s smart mobility platform, at the heart of which lies its client and demand-driven business model. The Lygg customer app enables corporate clients with regular transportation requirements to book point-to-point itineraries across Europe.

“We have people moving around every week, so the use [of privatized flights] could be very active … we [also] have a lot of visitors [come] here at the factory. The nearest airfield is in Kuopio, from where it always takes time to get here [IIsalmi],” says Tommi Väänänen, who heads supply chain for Ponsse Plc, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of large-scale forest machines. Ponsse plans to use Lygg’s existing Helsinki-Iisalmi direct connection flights for easier access to the company’s remotely-based site.

Since 2020, the Scandinavian startup’s regional air travel platform has been addressing the inefficiencies of the current regional business travel model with its solutions. The aviation industry’s shortcomings have been magnified with the return in droves of travelers following the recent pandemic lockdowns. Lygg aims to circumvent those problems by offering customers bespoke regional air travel solutions as an alternative to short-haul commercial airline routes, whose flights have either been discontinued due to the pandemic or have merely become feeders to fill long-haul carrier aircraft.

The technology powering Lygg’s platform enables accurate passenger and cargo volume measurement over time, which allows Lygg to sustainably organize flight frequencies with as few empty seats as possible. The new flights serve destinations with the following rotations:

• Helsinki, Finland - Örebro, Sweden, daily flight Monday to Friday;
• Helsinki, Finland - Lynköping, Sweden, weekly flight;
• Örebro, Sweden - Tallinn, Estonia, daily flight Monday to Friday;
• Helsinki, Finland - Tallinn, Estonia, up to three flights daily, ramping up to six daily rotations.

The Lygg platform also reconciles distance and payload for smart asset allocation — essentially matching the right planes and facilities with demand. Aircraft deployed on flight itineraries are optimized to their full capacity or as close to it as possible. Importantly, the platform offers operators of Lygg’s digitalized fleet the unprecedented benefit of predictability and guarantee of income for this class of aircraft. Additionally, asset optimization also highly reduces carbon emissions. For example, a Tampere-Stockholm direct connection flight, as compared to the offer of a traditional airline via a hub, reduces carbon emissions by 43 percent. Planes scheduled to fly to the new destinations currently include:

• One Pilatus PC-12, a single-engine turbine-powered aircraft
• Two Piper Pa-31, twin-engine turbocharged piston
• Two Beechcraft Super King Air 200, a twin-engine, turboprop

The Lygg business travel solution maximizes efficiency and trims unnecessary commercial airline-related costs for customers by operating out of smaller, peripheral airports and airfields, or private terminals. Ultimately, time and money lost by sending staff on commercial airlines is recaptured by leveraging under-used assets, including airports and new aircraft categories. The new flights will operate out of the private, user-friendly, service-supported premium business terminals in Helsinki and Tallinn. Local airports will be used in Örebro and Linköping.

Jari-Jussi Viinikkala, CFO and Co-Founder of Lygg, said: “It is a two-sided market that is profitable from day one of operations for all parties benefiting from our offering. Lygg’s attractive customer experience has conquered passenger reluctance to travel for business and brought value to operators. By reactivating direct routes that had vanished due to the pandemic and creating new ones, Lygg is breathing economic vitality in the regions we serve.”