Riga, 18.09.2006
The number of passengers carried by Latvian airline airBaltic in 2006 reached one million this September. For the first time in its history, the airline has carried a million passengers in less than nine months. Last year airBaltic registered its first-ever millionth passenger of the year in December.
“A million passengers in nine months: this is the fastest growth in passenger numbers in the airline’s history. Thanks to our strategy of expanding operations in the former USSR, our new routes and our ability to compete successfully with less efficient airlines, airBaltic is now the biggest air passenger carrier in Latvia and Lithuania. In August we significantly outperformed our rivals at Riga airport. We will continue to provide good prices and attractive destinations to our passengers, and hard times to our competitors, no matter how cheap or traditional they are,” airBaltic president Bertolt Flick commented.
This year airBaltic has opened 15 new direct routes. From Riga, 2006 saw the opening of flights to Baku, Bergen, Dusseldorf, Kaliningrad, Liepaja, Simferopol, Tbilisi, Tel Aviv, Warsaw and Zurich (from 29 October). From Vilnius, new routes were opened to Budapest, Dusseldorf, Stockholm and Warsaw. Flights also opened from Kaliningrad to Copenhagen. Before the end of the year the airline intends to open one more new route, and to increase the fleet by the addition of another Boeing-737. This August airBaltic’s market share at Riga airport grew to 43%, leaving its closest rival 19% behind. The airline closed the first half of 2006 with a profit of 984,000 lats.
Last year airBaltic transported 1 037 925 passengers over the course of the year, an increase of 76% over 2004, when the airline transported 589 288 passengers.
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