The balance sheet for Riga Airport for the preceding year shows 3,160,945 passengers served representing a growth of 26.7% over the twelve months of the year before last year. The increase in the number of passengers served by Tallinn Airport was 12.1% during this period of time, while for the Vilnius Airport it was an18.3% increase.
The early forecasts of Riga Airport have been fulfilled: to serve at least 3,100,000 passengers in 2007.
- Riga: 3 160 945
- Tallinn: 1 728 430
- Vilnius: 1 717 222
In the preceding four year time period Riga Airport has succeeded in tripling the number of passengers served from 1.06 million in year 2004 to 3.16 million passengers served last year.
In December of last year Riga Airport served 243,546 passengers, which is up by 22.2% compared to December 2006. In a similar period of time the Tallinn Airport served 16% more passengers and Vilnius Airport served 31.3% more passengers than in December 2006.
The majority of the passengers last year chose London - the capital city of Great Britain, as their destination. Last year 314,399 passengers went there which constitutes 10.7% of the total passenger amount. The second most widely chosen direction was Dublin - the capital city of Ireland with 226,872 passengers or 7.7% of the total amount of passengers going there. The other popular cities – Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen and Frankfurt, were visited respectively by 6.5%, 5.8%, 5.5% and 5.3% from the total amount of passengers.
There is an interesting trend observed in 2007 in terms of favourite destinations, i.e., from February to November the third place destination was the capital city of Sweden – Stockholm, while the fourth – Berlin, the capital city of Germany. In the winter months this year – January and December, Berlin, however, is given preference over Stockholm as a passenger destination.
Likewise the fifth most popular destination of the year – Copenhagen was five times (in January, March, May, June, September, November) ahead of the fourth most popular destination - Berlin.
Last year’s status of the most successful airline was retained by the Latvian National Airline airBaltic. In 2007 it carried 1,422,464 passengers or 45% of the total number of passengers. 25.3% of the total number of passengers or 800,449 passengers were flown from Riga Airport by the second most popular airline Ryanair. Other popular airlines were Latcharter (5.1%), KLM (3.4%), Czech Airlines (2.9%) and easyJet Airlines (2.8% of the total amount of passengers in 2007).
From January 17 airline Ryanair launched direct flights to Milan, while from May 2 the German low fare airline Germanwings will launch direct flights to the German city of Cologne.
The Latvian Airline airBaltic will in the summer season of 2008 launch new flights from Riga to Yerevan – the capital city of Armenia, the largest city of Kazakhstan – Almaty, and the Norwegian city of Alesund.