Riga Airport in S'23: growth in routes, pax volumes - and not least transfer traffic

Published: 23-03-2023 Riga Airport in S'23: growth in routes, pax volumes - and not least transfer traffic

Mar 23, 2023 (newstodate): Latvia's Riga Airport is preparing for a busy summer '23 schedule starting from March 26, 2023.
   With the airport monitors to display passenger scheduled and charter flights to over 100 destinations, the weekly volume of flights this summer will exceed 1,000 and the traffic will be provided by 15 carriers operating at Riga Airport.
   With Riga Airport as its home base, airBaltic will provide the bulk of the traffic, expanding its range of services with the opening of flights on ten new routes and increased frequencies on existing summer leisure and short break routes.
   Starting from 15 April, airBaltic will fly twice-weekly on the route to Hanover that is a new direct connection at the airport.
   airBaltic's schedule will also include twice-weekly flights to Porto and Bilbao from May, and four 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.
   Another key airline at Riga Airport, Ryanair will open flights from March 28, 2023, to Gdansk, also bringing in a new connection at Riga Airport, and the Greek airline Aegean will offer twice-weekly flights to Athens from May 19.
   -Thanks to the many tourist destinations, the number of direct passengers at Riga Airport has approached the pre-pandemic level, while the volume of transfer passengers will increase with new airBaltic routes such as Istanbul, Baku, Yerevan and others, says Laila Odiņa, Chairperson of the Airport Board, in a comment to the airport's release.
   Formerly building on transfer and transit traffic to balance the limited size of the home market, the impact of Putin's war on Ukraine has been noticeable in transfer passenger numbers at Riga Airport; in 2022 the volume of transfer passengers thus declined by 60 percent, compared to 2019.
   In 2021, transfer passengers accounted for 22 percent of the airport's total throughput - but in 2013 the proportion was as high as 50 percent.
   A large proportion of the airport's transfer traffic was earlier generated in the Russian and Belarus markets; in 2016, Russia alone accounted for 54 percent of all transfer passengers through Riga Airport, even rising to 57 percent in 2017.

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