RIGA - Latvia's Transport Ministry has denied Lithuanian Airlines permission to conduct charter flights from Riga International Airport.
Lithuanian Airlines, which is wholly state-owned and slated for sale this month, had applied to begin charter flights from Riga to Varna, a discount resort on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast.
Arnis Muiznieks, head of the ministry's aviation department, told the Baltic News Service that the airline was denied the permission since the destination was not EU territory and therefore required a reciprocal gesture from Lithuania's aviation authorities. Thus if Lithuanian Airlines wants to fly from Riga to a non-EU members state, a Latvian airline would have to be granted a similar license for providing charter flights from Vilnius to a non-EU member.
"Lithuanian Airlines can provide as many flights from Riga to any EU member state as it pleases, but flights to other countries are regulated by the national laws," Muiznieks said.
"Latvia does not have to give up what it is not obliged to give up," he added.
This was the ministry's second similar decision in recent weeks. Novatours, the Latvian branch of a pan-Baltic tourism agency, has filed a complaint to the Competition Council about the Transport Ministry's recent decision prohibiting the company from chartering Tunisia's Karthago Airlines to carry tourists. The company said it had received replies from airBaltic and Latcharter Airlines, which said they were unable to meet the tourism company's requirements as regards flight schedule and that Karthago Airlines should be granted permission.
Novatours is planning to turn to the Administrative Court next week with a demand to lift the ministry's decision.
Muiznieks earlier explained that Novatours had not been allowed to use Tunisian charter flights since that was against international procedure. He said that Latvian airlines are usually used for charter flights from Latvia and back, as the passengers of the charter flights spent their money in the country of destination. By contrast, the flights from Tunisia and back are to be served by Tunisian airlines because passengers would spend their money in Latvia.
Novatours, continued Muiznieks, wants to go counter to accepted arrangements and have a Tunisian airline come to Latvia, pick up passengers and take them to Tunisia where they would spend their money, and then carry them back to Latvia. That way there won't be any benefit either to Latvian airlines or the state, said the ministry official.
