100 direct destinations to be available from Riga airport during summer season

RIGA - The summer flight season, which will begin on Sunday, March 26, will be launched at Riga Airport with 11 new destinations, LETA learned from the airport.

Passengers will have an opportunity to travel to 100 direct destinations from Riga, thus significantly expanding the range of connections from Riga, including two new destinations – Hanover in Germany and Gdansk in Poland.

“In this summer season, Riga is expected to offer ample travel opportunities for Latvian and Baltic travelers and attractive connections for passengers who will choose Riga Airport as a transfer point for their onward flights. Thanks to the many tourist destinations, the number of direct passengers at Riga Airport has approached the pre-pandemic level, whereas the number of transit passengers will increase with new airBaltic routes such as Istanbul, Baku, Yerevan and others," said Laila Odina, Chairperson of the Airport Board. 

This summer, Latvia's national carrier airBaltic will expand its range of services with ten new routes and increased frequencies on existing summer leisure and short break routes. From April 15, airBaltic will fly twice weekly on the route Riga–Hanover–Riga – a German city to which Riga has had no direct air connection until now. The new schedule will also include twice-weekly flights to Porto and Bilbao from May, and four-times-weekly flights to Istanbul from the beginning of April. In May, regular flights will also be launched to Bucharest, Burgas, Belgrade, Tivat, Yerevan and Baku.

On March 28, the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair will start flights from Riga to the northern Polish city of Gdansk, with which there has been no direct air traffic before. Flights on this route are scheduled three times a week.

The Greek airline Aegean will return to the range of airlines in Riga in the upcoming summer season as a regular carrier with flights on the Riga–Athens route twice a week, starting from May 19.

Thus, 15 carriers will operate at Riga Airport in the summer season of 2023. It is planned that in the first full week of the summer flight schedule, the number of passenger flights will increase by more than 10 percent as compared to the end of the winter season and will exceed 1,000 passenger flights per week.

As reported, 5.38 million passengers were served at Riga Airport in 2022, which is 2.3 times as many as a year before. Last year, the airport handled 54,818 flights, which is an increase of 40 percent against a year before. The number of passenger flights grew by 69 percent year-on-year to 48,427.

Riga International Airport is the largest air traffic hub in the Baltic states.