Finnair sacks cabin crew for unauthorized use of Wi-Fi

National flag carrier Finnair has fired some employees, who have unauthorized access to aircraft' Wi-Fi network with customers' flight IDs, local media reported on Tuesday.

The airline has confirmed the dismissals to news agency STT, but refused to disclose the number of redundancies and the nationality of the dismissed employees at this stage, as the incident is being investigated and the employees are being inquired.

Jari Toivonen, chairman of the Finnish Cabin Crew Association, told STT that he is aware of the matter, but does not know how many employees were affected by the dismissal.

Finnair informed its employees that the investigation of the incident will continue at least this week, according to Toivonen.

The incident was unveiled by a Finnish language tabloid Iltalehti earlier in October.

Arja Suominen, Finnair's director of Corporate Communications and Corporate Responsibility, told the daily that what those cabin crew members did has caused not only harm to customers, but also financial damage to Finnair.

Some of the cabin crew members have reportedly used the Wi-Fi network for passengers. Once the cabin crew member accessed the network with a passenger ID, the passenger was not able to access the network. Such behavior has caused inconvenience to customers and weakened the on-board Wi-Fi service, said Suominen.

According to information obtained by Iltalehti, over 100 Finnair cabin crew members are suspected of misusing on-board Wi-Fi.