The first half-year: Riga International Airport keeps its leading position in the Baltics!

In the first half of this year SJSC Riga International Airport served 1 659 185 passengers, which is 17,4% more than in the same period of the last year.  

The Tallinn airport, in the first half of this year, has served 900 190, the airport in Vilnius - 993 509 passengers.   In June, SJSC Riga International Airportserved 346 137 passengers, which is 14,4% more than in June 2007.  

In the first half of this year, the largest amount of the passengers from Riga went to London - 145 947 passengers chose the capital of Great Britain as their destination; this is 9% of the total volume of passengers.  

The second most popular destination was Dublin with its 102 279 passengers or 6,6% of the total passenger flow.

The thirst place belongs to Berlin with 96 303 passengers or 6,2% of the total passenger amount.

The fourth and the fifth places are occupied by Stockholm with 90 792 passengers, which is 5,8% of the passenger flow, and Copenhagen with 78 166 passengers or 5% of the total amount of the passengers served in the first half-year.  

The most popular airline in the first half of this year at the SJSC Riga International Airport was the Latvian national airline airBaltic. It served 809 255 passengers, which constitutes 48,8% of the total amount of passengers at the airport. Among their airlines, 409 650 or 24,7% of the total passenger flow was carried by the second most popular airline - the Irish low-cost Ryanair.

The third place with 61 324 (3,7%) passengers belongs to the LatCharter followed by the KLM with more than 47 700 (2,9%) and Czech Airlines with more than 41 800 (2,55) passengers.   Currently, the Riga airport offers 60 direct destinations.

This year, three new airlines have launched their regular flights from the Riga airport. In March, the Lithuanian airline FlyLAL started its regular flights to Vilnius. In May, the German low-cost Germanwings opened its direct flight to the German city of Cologne, while the Armenian airline Armavia launched its route Riga-Yerevan this June.    

Twelve new direct flights have been opened this year. Latvian airBaltic flies to Kishinev in Moldova, Nice in France, Alma-Ati in Kazakhstan, Yerevan in Armenia, Kuopio in Finland, Venice in Italy, Olesund in Norway, Billund in Denmark and Sochi in Russia. Ryanair has launched direct flights to Milan in Italy, but the German Germanwings - flights to Cologne in Germany.  

19 airlines operate in the Riga airport. (airBaltic, KLM, FlyLAL, Czech Airlines, SAS, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aeroflot, Austrian, Uzbekistan airways, LOT, LatCharter, Turkish airlines, Ryanair, easyJet, Aerlingus, Norwegian, Germanwings and Armavia).   In 2007, the Riga airport served 3.16 million passengers, which is 26,7 % more than in 2006. The Tallinn and Vilnius airports had 1.7 million passengers each, thus, last year the Riga airport served 92% of the total amount of passengers at the Tallinn and Vilnius airports.