Karair
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| Founded | 1947 | ||||||
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| Ceased operations | 1996 (merged into Finnair) | ||||||
| Hubs | Helsinki Airport | ||||||
| Parent company | Finnair (since 1963) | ||||||
| Headquarters | Helsinki, Finland | ||||||
| Key people | Niilo and Valto Karhumäki (founders) | ||||||
Karair was an airline from Finland. Initially having offered scheduled passenger flights, the company became a subsidiary of Finnair, mainly operating on holiday charter routes.
Originally called Karhumäki Airways, the company was founded in 1947 as a subsidiary of Veljekset Karhumäki Oy, an aircraft manufacturing and maintenance company owned by Niilo and Valto Karhumäki. In June 1951 scheduled services began between Helsinki and Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Vaasa and Sundsvall. Initially operating on domestic routes with a fleet of four Douglas DC-3 and two Convair CV-440 Metropolitan airliners, the first international flight (to ) took place in 1951, which was followed by holiday flights to Málaga.
In 1956 the airline was reorganised as Kar-Air OY and started operations in January 1957. A Swedish subsidiary was established, which from 1961 onwards operated a single Douglas DC-6 on chartered flights to Southern Europe. In 1962, Aero O/Y acquired a 27 percent stake in Kar-Air, which was increased to 51 percent over the following years, since Kar-Air had encountered financial difficulties when its two Metropolitans were damaged in hard landings and had to be taken out of service for a period in 1963. The new majority owner demanded Kar-Air to cease domestic flying, concentrating on charter flights (mainly to the Mediterranean) holiday resorts instead. For this purpose, Aero O/Y handed over two of its own DC-6 aircraft, which Kar-Air also used for multiple stopover round-the-world flights.
The DC-6s remained the backbone of the Kar-Air passenger fleet until 1972, when the jet age was joined with the introduction of the 189-seat Douglas DC-8. One DC-6 was re-configured with a swing tail unit for cargo transport purposes and stayed with the airline until 1980, mainly operating freight flights for Finnair to the UK and other European destinations, when cargo flights were taken over by Finnair (as Aero O/Y was named by then). In the same year, the airline underwent another rebranding, being known as Karair, also styled KarAir henceforth. Over the following years, Karair reduced its fleet, because charter contracts with Finnair had been terminated.
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