Wizz Air’s distinctive pink-and-purple Airbus A321neo was met with a water-cannon salute at Turku Airport on Friday evening, 12 December 2025, marking the official inauguration of a thrice-weekly link between Turku and Vilnius. The ribbon-cutting ceremony drew an eclectic line-up of speakers, including Turku’s Mayor Piia Elo, Lithuania’s Ambassador to Finland Edvilas Raudonikis and Wizz Air’s communications chief Salvatore Gabriele Imperiale.
For regional decision-makers, the route is more than a celebration of colourful balloons and Finnish chocolates handed out in the departure lounge. It plugs a conspicuous gap in Southwest Finland’s air network by giving businesses in Turku’s maritime-technology and life-sciences clusters a non-stop gateway to the Baltics—an important subcontracting and talent market. Until now, travellers have typically connected via Helsinki or Riga, adding three to four hours to a door-to-door journey. Wizz Air’s eastbound flight time is just 1 hour 25 minutes, making same-day trips viable for project teams and sales staff.
Finavia, the state-owned airport operator, has made a point of courting low-cost carriers to diversify beyond Helsinki-Vantaa. Last year it froze landing-fee increases at regional fields and offered a marketing-support package for new international routes. Turku is already served by Wizz Air’s Bucharest flights and Ryanair’s connections to Gdańsk and Stansted; passenger volumes have rebounded to 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
![Wizz Air launches Turku–Vilnius service, boosting Southwest Finland’s connectivity]()
Before companies rush to fill those new seats, it’s worth remembering that citizens of neither Finland nor Lithuania need visas for short business visits—but third-country nationals based in Southwest Finland sometimes do. VisaHQ’s Finland portal (https://www.visahq.com/finland/) streamlines the paperwork by listing entry rules for every nationality and can arrange Schengen, Baltic and even onward visas in one order, saving mobility teams time and compliance headaches.
For mobility managers, the immediate upside is lower total travel cost. Advance return fares on the new rotation start at €29 each way—roughly one-third of the legacy-carrier fare via Helsinki. Logistics teams shipping urgent medical-technology parts also benefit: Wizz Air Cargo confirmed that its belly-hold capacity will be bookable via major freight forwarders, opening a 10-tonne weekly uplift between Finland and Lithuania.
The launch underlines an emerging trend in Finland’s aviation landscape: secondary airports are leveraging point-to-point low-cost service to accelerate regional economic goals. With Lapland’s winter-tourism airports already enjoying record connectivity, attention is shifting to southern industrial hubs such as Turku and Tampere. If load factors meet Wizz Air’s 80 percent target, Finavia officials indicated that the carrier is already assessing a summer-season frequency increase, potentially turning the route into a daily service by 2026.
For regional decision-makers, the route is more than a celebration of colourful balloons and Finnish chocolates handed out in the departure lounge. It plugs a conspicuous gap in Southwest Finland’s air network by giving businesses in Turku’s maritime-technology and life-sciences clusters a non-stop gateway to the Baltics—an important subcontracting and talent market. Until now, travellers have typically connected via Helsinki or Riga, adding three to four hours to a door-to-door journey. Wizz Air’s eastbound flight time is just 1 hour 25 minutes, making same-day trips viable for project teams and sales staff.
Finavia, the state-owned airport operator, has made a point of courting low-cost carriers to diversify beyond Helsinki-Vantaa. Last year it froze landing-fee increases at regional fields and offered a marketing-support package for new international routes. Turku is already served by Wizz Air’s Bucharest flights and Ryanair’s connections to Gdańsk and Stansted; passenger volumes have rebounded to 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
Before companies rush to fill those new seats, it’s worth remembering that citizens of neither Finland nor Lithuania need visas for short business visits—but third-country nationals based in Southwest Finland sometimes do. VisaHQ’s Finland portal (https://www.visahq.com/finland/) streamlines the paperwork by listing entry rules for every nationality and can arrange Schengen, Baltic and even onward visas in one order, saving mobility teams time and compliance headaches.
For mobility managers, the immediate upside is lower total travel cost. Advance return fares on the new rotation start at €29 each way—roughly one-third of the legacy-carrier fare via Helsinki. Logistics teams shipping urgent medical-technology parts also benefit: Wizz Air Cargo confirmed that its belly-hold capacity will be bookable via major freight forwarders, opening a 10-tonne weekly uplift between Finland and Lithuania.
The launch underlines an emerging trend in Finland’s aviation landscape: secondary airports are leveraging point-to-point low-cost service to accelerate regional economic goals. With Lapland’s winter-tourism airports already enjoying record connectivity, attention is shifting to southern industrial hubs such as Turku and Tampere. If load factors meet Wizz Air’s 80 percent target, Finavia officials indicated that the carrier is already assessing a summer-season frequency increase, potentially turning the route into a daily service by 2026.
