Military flying at Luonetjärvi, in the old rural municipality of Jyväskylä, began because of geography. According to the Defence Forces’ own unit history, the closeness of the Immola base to the Soviet border and the tightening international situation led to the flying regiment being moved to Luonetjärvi on 11 October 1939, seven weeks before the Soviet attack. The unit was Flying Regiment 4 (Lentorykmentti 4), and its business was bombing.

In the Winter War of 1939–1940 the regiment flew Bristol Blenheims with Bombing Squadrons 42, 44 and 46. The unit history records 423 war sorties and the loss of 18 aircraft and 21 aircrew. Those are heavy figures for an air force that, by its own account, began the war with just over 100 combat aircraft.

In the Continuation War of 1941–1944 the regiment grew into a mixed bomber force. To the Blenheims it added German Dornier Do 17Zs and Junkers Ju 88As and captured Soviet Il-2s and SB-2s. It flew more than 4,000 sorties and lost 65 aircraft and 164 aircrew, again according to the unit history. In the Lapland War against the former German ally, from autumn 1944 to spring 1945, it flew 462 sorties and lost seven aircraft and 16 aircrew.

Not every sortie was flown from Luonetjärvi: a bomber regiment in a moving war dispersed its squadrons to forward fields. But the regiment’s home stayed in Central Finland, and after the peace of 1944 and the Paris Treaty limits of 1947 it was one of the units kept in being, renamed the 1st Wing in the post-war reorganisation.

The post-war wing flew Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters from 1948, then entered the jet age. The unit history is exact: “Vampiret aloittivat suihkukonekauden Luonetjärvillä 1956”, the Vampires started the jet era at Luonetjärvi in 1956. In 1957 the 1st Wing was renamed the Häme Air Wing (Hämeen Lennosto), the name it carried for the rest of its time in Central Finland.

The most colourful chapter came in 1958. The first Folland Gnats arrived on 30 July, and on 31 July Major Lauri Pekuri, a Second World War fighter ace, broke the sound barrier in one, the first Finnish pilot to do so. The Gnat was small, fast and difficult: Finland bought 13, and secondary histories, not confirmed in the official sources consulted, describe it as maintenance-heavy for conscript mechanics, with the whole fleet grounded for half a year from 26 August 1958 after a hydraulic failure destroyed one aircraft.

Fouga Magister jet trainers followed in 1963. The unit history also dates MiG-21F fighters to 1966, although the MiG-21 is more usually associated with the Karelia wing at Kuopio. In 1972 the first Saab 35 Drakens replaced the ageing Gnats, which were withdrawn the same year.

The Draken brought the move north. On 16 August 1973 the Häme Air Wing left for Rovaniemi, and on Independence Day 1974 it was renamed the Lapland Air Wing. It still flies there, now converting to the F-35A. Tikkakoski lost its fighter wing, but by then the base had already begun its second life as a school and a headquarters.

The Finnish Air Force’s own history states it plainly: “The Air Force Command was transferred from Helsinki to underground facilities at Luonetjärvi in Tikkakoski in 1972.” The Defence Forces history site gives a different date, 18 December 1973, and explains the move by operational needs and the government’s policy of moving state functions out of the capital. Both dates are published here; the difference may reflect the opening of the underground facility and the formal transfer of the staff, but no source consulted says so.

Before the move the headquarters had a restless history. It was founded in Mikkeli on 28 April 1918 by the German Captain Carl Seber, moved to Helsinki within two weeks, sat on Santahamina from 1918 to 1928 and changed addresses nine times before the Winter War. In both wars it worked mainly from Mikkeli near General Headquarters, and from 1942 to 1973 it occupied a former cadet school in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki.

At Tikkakoski the command is the headquarters of the Commander of the Air Force and directs Finland’s air defence in normal conditions and in crisis. The Air Force history adds that the site also housed the Air Force C3 Systems School, moved from Hämeenlinna, the Air Combat Centre and, from the 2012 Defence Forces reform, the Air Operations Centre that directs air policing.

The underground site is acknowledged by the Air Force but not described: its depth, size and layout are not published, and this page does not guess at them. Its visiting address, Komentotie 250, is on the Air Force’s contact page. Since Finland joined NATO in April 2023 the command also works with allied structures, but the national air defence chain still runs from here.

The school at Tikkakoski grew out of signals, not flying. The Defence Forces history notes that “Tikkakoski ja Luonetjärvin varuskunta oli alun perin Ilmavoimien Viestikoulun sijaintipaikka jo 1960-luvulta lähtien”: the garrison was originally the seat of the Air Force Signals School from the 1960s. In 1971 Tikkakoski was approved as a military educational establishment, and in 1989 the Luonetjärvi band was attached to the school.

In 2005 came the change of name that shaped the base today. The Signals School became the Air Force Academy (Ilmasotakoulu), while the old academy at Kauhava, where Finnish military pilots had trained since 1929, became the Flight School (Lentosotakoulu). In 2008 the academy took full responsibility for training air defence personnel.

The 2015 reform finished the job. Flying at Kauhava had ended in 2014, and its flight school was merged into the Air Force Academy at Tikkakoski, along with technical training. The academy now describes itself as the Air Force’s only unit with a primary educational role and a university-level military education institution. Its courses cover air defence, aircraft and signals engineering, air surveillance, fighter control, base operations, protection and military drivers as well as pilots.

Membership of NATO has brought foreign students. According to the Defence Forces history, the first partner-nation pilot students, from Norway, graduated as Hawk pilots in 2023–2025. The exact number of Norwegian graduates is not given in the sources consulted.

The Hawk is the base’s signature aircraft. Finland chose it in 1977 to succeed the Fouga Magister; the first Hawk Mk 51 arrived on 19 December 1980. Four were built in England and the rest assembled by Valmet at Kuorevesi. According to Patria, cracks found in fuselages in the 1990s forced load restrictions and a structural programme costing about 400 million marks, against a BAE Systems estimate of 2 billion. Seven Mk 51As were bought in 1993 to replace damaged airframes, and 18 former Swiss Mk 66s in 2007.

The Hawks were concentrated at Kauhava in 2005 and moved to Fighter Squadron 41 (Hävittäjälentolaivue 41) at Tikkakoski in 2014. Patria counts 32 modernised Hawks in service, with glass cockpits fitted in 2011–2013. The sources consulted do not name a successor type.

Elementary training moved from the Valmet Vinka to the Grob G 115E. The Vinka flew its farewell at Tikkakoski on 31 August 2022 after more than 40 years; the Air Force acquired 28 Grobs. Air Force officers told Ruotuväki that the Grob’s large displays can show tactical information and other aircraft’s positions, while the Vinka had analogue instruments and no display beyond small GPS units.

The Midnight Hawks have been the Air Force’s official aerobatic team since 1997. Four Hawks fly, with one spare; every pilot is a qualified instructor of Fighter Squadron 41. The team flies three sequences for different weather, from vertical figures under a high ceiling to flat formation passes under low cloud, and its 2026 season included six displays in Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

The Finnish Air Force Museum (Ilmavoimamuseo) stands at Tikkakoskentie 125, about 20 kilometres from Jyväskylä. It presents Finnish military aviation from the 1910s to the present and holds more than 3,600 objects, only part of them on show. The museum’s own pages do not give its founding date; secondary sources give 1 June 1979, which is not confirmed here.

The oldest exhibit is the start of the whole story: the Thulin typ D donated by the Swedish Count Eric von Rosen, which flew from Umeå to Vaasa on 6 March 1918 with the Swedish pilot Lieutenant Nils Kindberg and blue swastikas on its wings. Those good-luck marks became the Finnish Air Force’s national insignia until 1945; they have nothing to do with the Nazi symbol, a point the Air Force still has to explain to visitors.

The most famous exhibit is Brewster BW-372. Finland bought 44 Brewster 239s in December 1939; this one was lost on 25 June 1942 with Lieutenant Lauri Pekuri at the controls, lay in a lake for 56 years and was raised in August 1998. It is on loan to the museum until 2028. Beside it stand the Fokker D.XXI FR-110, credited with 9.5 victories, the most of any D.XXI, and Hurricane HC-452, one of 12 bought in 1940.

The museum is also restoring a VL Myrsky II, the wartime fighter designed and built by the State Aircraft Factory, and hosted a public lecture on the project in November 2026.