In April Riga International Airport serviced 272 873 passengers or 10.6% more than in April 2007. Tallinn airport in the 4th quarter of the year had serviced 155 124, and Vilnius Airport - 166 125 passengers.
Passenger traffic in 2008
Similarly to the previous moths, in April the largest number of passengers travelled to London. The UK capital in April was chosen as a destination by 23 426 passengers or 10% of the total passenger traffic in the first four months. The second most popular destination Dublin in April was overtaken by the capital of Sweden Stockholm attracting 16 111 passengers or 5.8% of the total passenger traffic in the four months. The capital of Ireland was the destination of 16 040 passengers accounting for 7% of the total passenger traffic of the year. To other popular destinations – Berlin (Germany) and Copenhagen (Denmark) - went respectively 6.3% and 5.3% of the total annual passenger traffic.
The status of the most popular carrier at Riga Airport still belongs to the Latvian national airline airBaltic. In April it carried 130 830 passengers or 46.4% of the total passenger traffic handled by the airport. Another popular carrier – the Irish budget airline Ryanair handled 68 062 passengers or 26.5% of the total passenger traffic. The third place with more than 8 280 passengers was occupied by KLM, who was followed by Latcharter with more than 7 740 and Czech Airlines with more than 7 220 passengers.
Riga Airport is a gateway to 67 direct destinations. In May the German budget airline Germanwings opened a direct route to Cologne (Germany) and in June the Armenian airline Armavia will commence flights on the route Riga – Erevan.
There are 18 airlines currently operating in Riga Airport: airBaltic, KLM, FlyLAL, Czech airlines, SAS, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aeroflot, Austrian, Uzbekistan airways, LOT, LatCharter, Turkish airlines, Ryanair, easyJet, Aerlingus, Norwegian, Germanwings.
In 2007 Riga Airport handled 3.16 million passenger traffic or r 26.7% more than in 2006. The airports of Tallinn and Vilnius in 2007 serviced 1.7 million passengers each. Thus, last year Riga Airport handled passenger traffic equal to 92% of the aggregate volume serviced by Tallinn and Vilnius Airports .