Soaring into the new millennium

TALLINN - Finnair Flight 113 from Helsinki arrived New Year's Day at
2:20 p.m. at the newly renovated Tallinn Airport, making it the first
flight arrival in 2000. Five passengers quickly disembarked at the
quiet Tallinn Airport where a minimum of staff worked to serve even
fewer travelers.

Among the passengers was Tauno Luoma of Helsinki, met by his wife
Maret. It was the first time Luoma had seen the airport since
renovations were completed in December.

"The new facility is incomparable to the former. The arrival area is
beautiful in its dominant use of the Estonian national colors and
suits it very well," he said.

The badly needed renovations during the past two years expanded the
VIP lounge, added more arrival and departure gates and improved
available facilities for eating, entertainment venues and shops. The
airport also has computer terminals for Internet.

Luoma considers Helsin-ki's Vantaa Airport to be "the most beautiful
airport in the world." The new airport is the biggest in the Baltics,
and officials predict as many as 1.4 million passengers will fly
through Tallinn each year. The cost of renovations was 351 million
kroons ($23.4 million).

"There were no problems and everything ran very smoothly," said
Finnair's Estonian director, Juhani Pe-lanne. Estonian Air's Raimond
Mait reported the company did not have any flights Dec. 31 or Jan. 1.
The reason for the reduced schedule was not because of Y2K fears but
a limited interest by passengers to fly over the first weekend of the
new year, he said. Estonian Air scheduled fewer flights on Jan. 2.

Estonia did not experience any major computer problems related to the
Y2K problem, said spokesmen from the central bank and government.

Referring to the govern-ment's preparation Priit Poiklik the prime
minister's spokesman, said, "We knew there would be no problems and
there weren't any."