HELSINKI, Oct. 30 (AFP) – Finnish airline Finnair reported a widening quarterly loss on Thursday, blaming low fares and passenger numbers and said no speedy recovery was in sight.

For the July-September period, Finnair posted a net loss of 20.7 million euros (30.5 million dollars) from a loss of 17.8 million euros in the same period of 2008.

''The third quarter result was in line with our expectations, even though it naturally does not in any way correspond with our goals,'' chief executive Jukka Hienonen said in the earnings statement.

He added that ''a steep fall in the average price is eroding profitability.''

The company repeated a warning that operating results for the whole of 2009 were expected to be ''clearly loss-making.''

Although there were some signs of the fall of demand leveling off, the company did not expect fares to rise much because of over capacity.