Did you know Helsinki Airport opened for the 1952 Olympic Games?

The first passenger aircraft to land at Helsinki Airport arrived on 5 July 1952, carrying athletes and guests to the Summer Olympic Games in the Finnish capital. According to Finavia, which operates the airport, Prime Minister Urho Kekkonen opened the new airport for Olympic traffic for about six weeks, while construction carried on after the Games.

Regular air traffic only began on 26 October 1952. At that point the airport had a single runway, and its first building was a wooden barrack that was extended over the years and earned the nickname "recumbent skyscraper" because of its shape. A terminal designed for one million passengers followed in 1969.

The contrast with today is striking. Finavia describes a terminal of more than 200,000 square metres with capacity for 30 million passengers, three runways and an airport area of 1,800 hectares, the same size as Helsinki's city centre. At the time of the airport's 70th anniversary in 2022, it offered about 130 direct connections worldwide.

For travellers, this history explains why Helsinki Airport has grown in successive phases rather than as a single building, including a ten-year investment programme that Finavia described in 2022 as the largest project in the airport's history. Passengers connecting through Helsinki should check Finavia's current terminal and gate information before travelling.