Yet another airline is bringing joy to grounded customers by recreating another flight experience from home. Finnair will start selling its well-known and hugely-popular blueberry juice at stores across Finland. The juice will be on sale for the month of December alongside business-class meals, which have been on sale since October.

Airlines have been struggling for cash in recent months as many flights remain grounded, and demand is low. As such, we’ve seen a whole host of airline paraphernalia go for sale. From bar carts to meals, pajamas, and even flights to nowhere. Now, Finnair is selling its famous blueberry juice for people to enjoy at home.

The airline previously started selling inflight meals in October, which include the popular reindeer meatballs. Now, and for the month of December, grounded passengers in Finland can head to their local K-group grocery store and pick up a bottle of the airline’s signature blueberry juice to go with their airline meal. The juice has been available onboard Finnair flights for six years, and over one million liters are drunk every year.

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Finnair Blueberry juice
Finnair's signature blueberry juice is now available in stores across Finland. Photo: Finnair

Making the juice

According to a statement on the airline’s website, making the juice available in stores will give the airline another revenue stream and allow passengers to enjoy a taste of travel. In addition, it also helps ensure the catering staff that makes the juice won’t lose their jobs. The cost of the juice, which is served for free on flights, hasn’t been confirmed.  Marika Nieminen, VP Finnair Kitchen, said:

“Blueberry juice has been a distinctive part of the Finnair customer experience, and it is loved by many of our customers. We wanted to offer this delicious drink, which has become a firm favourite of the Finnair in-flight experience to our customers who have a taste for travel and want to enjoy Finnair from the comfort of their own homes.”

The juice is made with 100% Finnish blueberries and manufactured in Turku on Finland’s coast. The whole process uses renewable energy as a part of the airline’s sustainability commitment.

Taste of Finnair serves up a unique menu of Nordic and Japanese food. Photo: Finnair

Aviation in Finland

In its Q3 results, the airline announced that revenues were down by almost 89% to just €97.4 million ($114 million). The airline has significantly cut its schedule to meet the lower demand and grounded most of its fleet. While offering the juice in stores might have persevered some catering staff's jobs, the rest of the airline’s employees were not so lucky. The airline will cut around 10% of its workforce to save costs.

However, things are starting to look up. Finnair confirmed it believes its fourth quarter will start to show signs of stronger demand, perhaps driven by holiday travel. The airline is focussing on cargo operations and flights to Asia, but it isn’t recovering as fast as it had hoped. Selling meals and juice may help keep jobs and create a small revenue stream, but the airline will have to sell a lot of juice to make up its missing numbers.