January this year the number of passengers in Tallinn airport was up 10.2% compared to the figure last year, the increase of the Vilnius airport passengers in the same period - 30.5%.
Just as year 2007, January this year the top destination in passenger traffic from Riga Airport is London. The number of passengers traveling to the capital of England in January is 24 331, which is 11% of the total passenger number. The second top destination is Dublin, with 17 605 passengers or 8% from the total. Other top destinations – Berlin, Stockholm, and Copenhagen - had 6.9%, 5.6% un 5.5% passengers, respectively, from the total number of passengers.
The leading carrier, January this year, is still the national airline „air Baltic”, with 106 710 passengers or 45.8% of the total. The Irish low-fare air company „Ryanair” follows with 65 222 passengers or 28% from the total. „KLM” is third with 7 300 passengers, followed by „Latcharter” with 6 900, and „EasyJet Airlines” with more than 6 800 passengers.
At the moment Riga Airport offers 60 destinations. On January the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair launched a new route to Milan, while on March there will be five new routes - Tel Aviv („airBaltic”), Chisinau („airBaltic”), Ventspils („airBaltic”), Erevānu (“Armavia”), and Vilnius (“FlyLAL”).
Presently there are 17 air companies operating at Riga airport - “airBaltic”, “KLM”, “FlyLAL”, “Czech airlines”, “SAS”, “Finnair”, “Lufthansa”, “Aeroflot”, “Austrian”, “Uzbekistan airways”, “LOT”, “LatCharter”, “Turkish airlines”, “Ryanair”, “easyJet”, “Aerlingus”, and “Norwegian”. Armenian air company „Armavia” will commence flights from Riga Airport on March 2008, while the German low-cost air company Germanwings” on May 2008.
Year 2007 Riga Airport handled 3.16 million passengers with growth of 26.7% compared to 2006. Tallinn and Vilnius airports handled 1.7 million passengers each, thus the number of passengers handled by Riga airport constitutes 92% of the total number of passengers handled by Tallinn and Vilnius airports.