My professional path has not been a straight line, but aviation has been part of it for a long time.

I started my career in the airline world, close to the practical realities of commercial aviation. Over the years, I worked with reservations, airline operations, route control and planning, revenue and yield management, and the many details that sit behind every flight long before passengers arrive at the airport.

That background gave me a practical understanding of how aviation really works. Routes are not created by wishful thinking alone. They need demand, timing, pricing, aircraft, crews, operational reliability, commercial logic and a great deal of coordination. A flight on a departure board may look simple, but behind it is a complex system of decisions, data, people and priorities.

Working inside the airline industry also taught me to look at connectivity from several angles at once. There is the passenger who needs a reliable journey. There is the airline that needs a commercially sustainable operation. There is the airport that needs volume and efficiency. And there is the region that needs access to markets, people, investments and opportunities.

I have also seen the harsher side of aviation. I experienced how strongly global events, geopolitics and financial realities can affect even the most committed teams and carefully built plans. In 2012, my employer, an airline, went bankrupt. After that came a new beginning and the remarkable experience of building something new from the ground up with our own airline. It taught me a great deal about resilience, responsibility and the fragile nature of the aviation business.

But then the geopolitical environment changed, financing was suddenly lost, and the direction changed once again. Later, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine added further layers to a story whose consequences are still felt – not only in individual lives, but across the industry and the wider world.

After years in aviation, my work gradually moved towards a broader question: what does air connectivity mean for a place?

That question eventually brought me to regional development and to Business Tampere, where I now work as Senior Specialist in Aviation and lead the Tampere International Accessibility Programme. In this role, I work at the intersection of aviation, business development, tourism, logistics and regional strategy.

My current work focuses on developing Tampere’s international air connectivity, strengthening airline partnerships, improving travel chains and supporting the long-term development of Tampere Airport as part of the wider regional economy. In practice, that can mean airline negotiations, route development, airport area development, marketing cooperation, logistics discussions, future aviation themes and a fair amount of patient bridge-building between different actors.

For me, aviation has never been only about aircraft or airports. It is about how regions connect to the world. Good connections can influence business travel, tourism, investment decisions, talent attraction, logistics, crisis resilience and the everyday competitiveness of a region. Poor connections are often noticed only when they are missing.

Perhaps that is why this work still feels meaningful. It combines the operational reality of aviation with the long-term development of places. It requires both numbers and relationships, strategy and patience, ambition and realism.

I believe in clear thinking, honest communication and the usefulness of dry humour when things get complicated – which, in aviation and regional development, they often do.

This site is not a formal CV. It is a place to bring together the professional path, ideas and observations behind the work: aviation, accessibility, regional competitiveness, logistics, writing and also a litle bit of life beyond aviation.