Baltic airports - how they do? (Archive)

[LatvianGG]

That's correct - Helsinki and Stockholm are both major transit airports. For example, a lot of latvian people flying to Northern America usually are flying through Helsinki or Copenhagen. But according to some information, soon there will be a straight connection from Riga to Northern America - the very well known and famous () Uzbekistan Airways are said to start a new route Tashkent - Riga - New York. A lot of people are still taking it more as a rumour.

@ch1le: Riga next year 2 mln passengers? There are some reasons to believe it:
- Ryanair starting to fly from end this year to 4 destinations: Tampere, London-Stansted, Frankfurt-Hahn and Stockholm-Skavsta later on. More new routes are planned to start next year. This will be the most important passenger stream boost.
- Easyjet will start to fly to Berlin-Schoenefeld. More routes might appear next year, but this is still not confirmed though.
- AirBaltic still planning to expand it's business.
- Like other new EU memberstates, Latvia is expecting a fast growing tourist curiousity - this means also more passengers to Riga Airport.
- Riga Airport is continuing it's started campaign (less airport tax) to bring new low-cost airlines which also might result in new airlines and new routes.
- Possible new route Tashkent-Riga-NewYork, still no new information about this.

Some reasons why there could appear some problems to reach those 2 mln:
- Rising oil prices might result in more expensive tickets, AirBaltic has already raised their ticket prices by +- 8 Euro.
- A growing lack of hotel space in Riga. If there soon will not appear numerous new hotels and accomodations in Riga, the ice-hockey world championsships might have problems with accomodating it's attendants. Especially lower class (2 and 3 star) hotels hardly needed.
- Tallinn and Vilnius might give Riga in future even harder competition for a status of Baltic's major airport.

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