During the first nine months of this year close to 1.5 million passengers have chosen to fly with airBaltic, or an increase by over 500,000 compared to last year. With a turnover of 171 MEURO (120 MLVL) and an operating result (EBITDAR) of close to 27 MEURO (18.8 MLVL), we have achieved a profit of 7.2 MEURO (5.1 MLVL): this has increased our result by almost 4 MEURO (2.7 MLVL). All in all, we have reached a stable financial position.

Itching to escape Northern Europe’s cold, dark winter? If so, you’re in luck. airBaltic is offering a new product for the winter season – all-inclusive travel packages to the sunny Egyptian resort of Hurghada, where the summertime season for sunbathing and swimming lasts the whole year round.

airBaltic launched yet another new direct route from Riga at the beginning of December – to Tashkent, the exotic capital of Uzbekistan.

This busy autumn season, airBaltic has not only opened four new direct routes from Riga to Oulu, Hurghada and Tashkent and from Vilnius to Chisinau. It has also increased the number of frequencies on several highly demanded routes.

airBaltic has introduced a new product, The Baltic Pass, created especially for foreign tourists wanting to visit all three Baltic states in a single trip.

Another handy new product for those who travel a lot within the Baltic region is Volume Tickets. If you are buying at least 10 round-trip tickets or 20 one-way tickets for flights within the Baltic states, fixed fares and special flexible conditions are available.

This winter, airBaltic is opening several new offices in Riga and around Latvia. In November, a new ticket office was opened in Daugavpils, the country’s second largest city, at a central location next to Daugavpils University at Vienības Street 11-42.

Passengers who book flights to Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn and Kiev at www.airbaltic.com can now, together with their tickets, rent the cheapest cars on the market.

airBaltic has moved a step further in its cooperation with the well-known hotel reservation service provider HRS and integrated its offers into the airBaltic Internet reservation system.

For a trial period of one week at the start of November, airBaltic introduced a totally innovative prepaid airline ticket, the first ever in Northern Europe, to be sold at the local supermarket.

As the winter nights draw in, what better way to soak up the festive spirit than with a trip to a Christmas market? Far more than just a shopping experience, let airBaltic whisk you away to some of Europe’s most magical Christmas fairs, where you’ll find elves, angels and maybe even Father Christmas himself…

No-one does Christmas quite as well as the Austrians. List all the things that you could associate with a ‘traditional’ Christmas – hot mulled wine, choirs of angelic children singing carols, warming food and homemade gifts – and it reads like a Viennese winter tour itinerary. It’s tempting to think that a Viennese Christmas is rather clichéd, almost artificial, until you remember that in Vienna these things are real, deep-rooted traditions. This is the way things are done. It’s everywhere else that has copied the Viennese take on the festive season, not the other way round.