Finland has been doing this for 43 years and people are still finding out!
Direct flights to Japan have been around since 1983. Finnair was the first Western European airline to fly non-stop to Japan with a DC-10 over Siberia while everyone else was going the long way around. Helsinki is geographically the closest EU capital to Tokyo when you fly the polar route. Finnair figured this out in the 80s and built their entire business model around it. 80% of their Asia passengers transit through Helsinki. The airport has a 35 minute minimum connection time because the whole thing is designed to get you from one plane to another as fast as possible.