Airlink (in Finland)

[davidjohnson6]

Small company in Finland that with airline BAS operates a route between Helsinki and Savonlinna.

Interesting part is how passengers pay for flights. Normally an airline will happily take payments by credit or debit card, with the airline insisting payment bd made in full before departure time (or booking is cancelled)
Airlink don't take credit cards and instead ask for payment by bank transfer. Now the really weird thing is that payment is not due until 14 days AFTER flight departure time. Furthermore the airline explicitly state that non payment before departure will not be treated as cancellation. This is not some membership based airline where companies pay a sizeable monthly fee and careful credit checks are performed - this is just an airline with one way fares starting at 80 euros

To someone as cynical as me, this all sounds quite bizarre from a commercial aspect. Has anyone either heard of other airlines doing this ? Does anyone know why Airlink follow this commercial policy ?

[eu01]

Airlink is a tourist agency responsible for marketing only. I guess they can afford small losses, these flights are paid directly by the city of Savonlinna as a PSO arrangement. As of 2015, the local support amounted to roughly 100.000 EUR a month, 5 thousand a day (no weekend flights). And indeed, too many passengers would mean kind of mishap. If there happened to be 10 or more pax paying per flight, their payments were deducted from the subsidy.

[davidjohnson6]

Helsinki-Savonlinna PSO route seems to expire on 22-Dec-2017
The Finnish Transport Agency issued a PSO tender in the summer (August ?), and the Savonlinna local Govt decided about a week ago to put up some cash to pay for the PSO

Anyone know when a PSO winner is going to be announced or when flights under the new PSO will begin to operate ? Any other info on this PSO would be gratefully received