HELSINKI - FINNISH airline Finnair could be forced to cut one third of its routes due to shrinking demand because of the global economic crisis, chief executive Jukka Hienonen said in an interview published on Friday.

'Today we fly to more than one hundred destinations. If worst comes to worst, we will need to cut one third... of our routes,' Mr Hienonen told the Iltalehti daily.

'We hope that cutting our routes by nine per cent (as announced earlier) will be enough (but) we are not forced to keep any route. It is not profitable to fly with empty aircraft,' he said.

If it had not been for the airline's profitable Asian routes 'we could afford to keep only about 20 (of today's 40) European routes,' he said.

The Finnish flag carrier announced in June it aimed to cut around 50 million euros (S$100 million) per year in costs to offset high fuel prices and cheaper ticket sales.

In September, after employees turned down a proposal to reduce or freeze wages to avoid layoffs, Finnair said it would slash 400 jobs, and warned a month later that even more job cuts could be necessary if the global economic slowdown persisted.

The company has also announced some 2,000 temporary layoffs for two weeks this year to cut costs.

Since then, oil prices have dropped dramatically, but that is not enough to ward off cuts to routes and jobs, Mr Hienonen said in Friday's interview.

'The oil price is down now and that has decreased fuel costs, but business travel has fallen sharply due to the recession,' he said, adding: 'I would have preferred expensive oil and (high) demand.' 'Oil should cost 100 dollars per barrel. That would eliminate unsound airlines that are now kept up and running artificially,' Mr Hienonen said, lamenting the 'overcapacity' in the industry.

'Early this year will show how low Finnair will go,' he said. -- AFP