AirBaltic Eyes Balkan Expansion To Compensate For Lost Russian, Ukrainian Traffic

AARHUS, Denmark—Latvian carrier airBaltic is looking to reposition Riga as a north-south hub, tapping connecting traffic flows from the Balkans to the Nordics and Western Europe.

This year airBaltic will operate around 130 routes, including 17 new additions for this summer, but the airline’s network has been reshaped by the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We used to be really big in Russia and Ukraine. A fairly big portion of our traffic came from those countries. Approximately 10%-15% of all traffic was from Russia and Ukraine, and we lost it overnight,” Mantas Vrubliauskas, airBaltic vice president for network development, told delegates at Routes Europe in Aarhus, Denmark.

AirBaltic initially responded by redeploying capacity to European leisure destinations in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. However, the shift has affected flight connections, so airBaltic is looking to rebalance traffic flows with a new network focus, adding flights to seven new countries in the Balkans.

Vrubliauskas said airBaltic’s home airports are strategically placed between Scandinavia and Southeast Europe. He added that the Balkans are underserved and have great potential.

“We want to get these transfer flows back to Riga, the ones that we partially lost with Russia and Ukraine. Hopefully, by establishing all these new routes in this region, we will be able to increase our transfer share at our Riga hub as well, because obviously frequencies and connectivity having reasonable transfer options are very, very important,” Vrubliauskas said.

In May, airBaltic will launch new services to Chisinau (Moldova), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Pristina (Kosovo), Skopje (Macedonia), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Tirana (Albania), joining its existing services to Belgrade (Serbia), Bucharest (Romania), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Split (Croatia), and Tivat (Montenegro).

The Riga-based carrier also plans to resume Ukraine flights as soon as it is safe to do so, serving Kyiv 7X-weekly from Riga, 4X-weekly from Vilnius, and 3X-weekly from Tallinn. Lviv flights are also planned 4X-weekly from Riga, 2X-weekly from Vilnius and 1X-weekly from Tallinn. This totals 21 weekly frequencies.

“We want to be the first airline to be back in Ukraine, and we are doing everything possible for this to happen,” Vrubliauskas said. “We will definitely be returning to this market, which has been very important for us in the past. We really believe that, with Ukraine joining the European Union, that’s going to be a huge and booming market. And we want to be part of that growth.”

Vrubliauskas declined to comment on potential new bases, building on its five aircraft bases in Riga (Latvia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Tallinn (Estonia), Tampere (Finland), and Gran Canaria (Spain). This last base, in Gran Canaria, has two aircraft during the winter season to capture off-season demand from the Nordics.

AirBaltic operates a fleet of 47 Airbus A220s on scheduled passenger and wet-lease services, carrying 4.5 million passengers annually, or 6.9 million including the wet-lease flights.