Getting to Finnish Lapland: Airports, UK Routes and Which One to Fly Into

Rovaniemi Airport handled 1,120,022 passengers in 2025, an increase of 18.4 per cent in one year. That single figure explains most of what has changed about Lapland travel: more routes, more competition, and an independent trip that used to be awkward is now straightforward.

Which airport should you fly into?

Rovaniemi for most trips. It serves the city, Santa Claus Village and eighteen of the twenty-four tours on this site. Kittilä if you are going to Levi or Ylläs. Ivalo only if you are heading to Saariselkä or Inari for the darker skies.

Getting this wrong is expensive in time rather than money. Lapland distances are long and winter driving is slow, so flying into the wrong airport can cost you the better part of a day at each end. Our comparison of the three bases covers which town suits which trip, and the airport follows from that rather than the other way round.

Which UK routes run this winter?

Four direct routes serve Rovaniemi for the 2026/27 season, including two new ones. easyJet flies from Gatwick and, newly, Newcastle. Ryanair runs daily from Stansted. British Airways has added a Gatwick service for the Christmas period.

Two things follow from that table. The Ryanair service is the longest season, opening in late October and running to late March, which covers the shoulder months where the value sits. And the British Airways route is Christmas-only, so it will not help a March trip.

Note also the dates at the edges. A late-March trip catches the deepest snow of the year but you need to check the route is still flying, because two of these four stop in the third week of March.

What do the flights cost?

British Airways lists direct London to Rovaniemi economy flights from about £192 each way for December 2026 departures. Low-cost carriers on the same route are typically cheaper outside the Christmas fortnight.

That £192 figure is a useful anchor because it is a full-service carrier's published fare on a peak-month date. It is the number that makes an independent trip competitive with a charter package, and it is the line item where booking early matters most.

The pattern to expect: fares climb steeply from October, peak hard around the Christmas fortnight, and fall through January into March. If your dates are flexible, moving a December trip to March usually saves more on the flight than on anything else, and March has more snow. Our month-by-month guide makes that case in full.

What about connecting through Helsinki?

Always an option and often the only one outside the direct-route season. It adds hours and a connection, but it opens up every Lapland airport and every date rather than the four winter routes.

If you are travelling in the shoulder season, from a regional UK airport, or to Ivalo, a Helsinki connection is usually how you get there. It is also the fallback when a direct route sells out, which peak December dates do.

If you are hiring a car at the other end, note that Finnish winter driving rules and licensing are set by Traficom, and Lapland roads carry snow for over half the year per the Finnish Meteorological Institute. There is a more romantic alternative that people ask about: the overnight train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, sometimes marketed as the Santa Claus Express. It is a real service and a genuinely pleasant way to arrive, though it costs you a night and is slower than flying. We have deliberately not printed a fare, because we could not confirm a current one against the operator.

Which airport for which activity?

Match the airport to the tours you actually want, not the other way round. Eighteen of the twenty-four tours here leave from Rovaniemi and five from Levi, which settles it for most trips.

That bottom row is an honest gap rather than an omission. Our verified product set is concentrated on Rovaniemi and Levi, so if Saariselkä is your plan you will be booking locally there rather than from this site.

How do you get from the airport?

Rovaniemi Airport is close to the city, and most tours offer pickup from central accommodation. That pickup radius is the detail worth checking, because it decides whether you need taxis.

We could not verify the exact airport-to-city distance and transfer time against a primary source, so we are not going to state one. What we can tell you is the thing that actually affects your booking: many of the tours listed here include hotel pickup and drop-off within a stated radius of Rovaniemi city centre, and each tour page carries what that operator says. Staying inside the pickup zone is worth more than saving a few euros a night on a hotel further out.

Common questions