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Nov 01, 2023 (newstodate): Lithuania is keen to sustain and develop its air connectivity without having an own national carrier to serve business and leisure traffic needs.
   A fresh attempt has now been made as the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation and the Vilnius City Municipality signed a historic agreement on the promotion of routes important for business and inbound tourism.  
   The aim of the agreement is to pool and coordinate the capabilities of the different authorities in order to ensure sustainable flights and passenger flows along strategic routes.
   The Ministry of Transport and Communications and Lithuanian Airports have committed to develop solutions to promote the supply of flights, while the Ministry of Economy and Innovation and the Vilnius City Municipality have undertaken to allocate resources to attract travelers from priority destinations.
   Lithuanian airports have already gained experience in implementing a pilot rish-sharing project for new flight promotion, under which regular flights between Vilnius and London City airports are in operation from October 1 this year.
   This risk sharing model envisages the implementation of flight promotion projects also for other strategic destinations which are currently on the list approved by a ministerial decree.
   The 27 priority destinations currently include major world cities such as New York, Brussels, Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow and others.  
   All the routes on the list between Lithuanian and world cities are recognised as important for business and inbound tourism. Thus, the flight promotion campaigns foreseen in the Ministries' strategic action plans can be implemented to ensure their targeted accessibility.
   Lithuania has thus - for the time being, at least - shelved the idea of setting up a new national carrier:
   -New scheduled national airline in Lithuania? Absolutely no plans, said Orijana Masala, CAVIA Chairman of the Board, at the recent Riga Aviation Forum.
   However, the setup of an airline to service Lithuania has emerged repeatedly since the demise of the latest attempt, Air Lituanica that ceased all flights from May 22, 2015, after a rather brief life in the air with its first commercial flight on June 30, 2013.
   Earlier, its predecessor flyLAL also folded its wings in bankruptcy on January 17, 2009.
   As late as autumn 2020, Lithuania's Minister of Transportation repeatedly aired intentions for establishing a new state-owned virtual airline to start services already before the end of the year in cooperation with an existing airline providing flight operations and fleet.
   According to a release, the aim was to make Lithuania "independent of foreign air carriers' constantly changing strategies", and to reduce the country's reliance on foreign airlines.