airBaltic grows its passenger numbers, home airport market share and fleet size
Latvian hybrid carrier airBaltic served 23 per cent more passenger in April, signed a codeshare agreement with SAS, took delivery of its 18th Airbus A220 aircraft and increased its home airport market share to 59 per cent.
The biggest airline in the Baltics region transported 412 682 passengers in April, a significant 23 per cent year-on-year improvement. “As the first month of the summer season, April brought very strong passenger numbers. It is the first month of 2019 during which we have improved our passenger numbers by more than 20 per cent on last year. Additionally, we reached a new record in Riga, achieving a 59 per cent market share [at the airport],” insists Martin Gauss airBaltic’s chief executive.
In the four months since the start of 2019 airBaltic has served 1.2 million passengers, 15 per cent more than year ago, and has concluded a codeshare agreement on a number of routes with Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), whereby airBaltic adds its BT code on flights connecting Riga and Alesund, Bergen, Stavanger, Tromso, Trondheim via such common gateways as Oslo and Copenhagen airport; and, in turn, SAS will place its SK flight code on direct flights from Stockholm Arlanda, Copenhagen and Oslo airports and vice versa, ensuring transportation between Scandinavian capitals and Riga, as well as connecting traffic from SAS’s whole network and Riga via its three hubs.
Furthermore, on May 18, the Riga-based airline took delivery of its 18th Airbus A220-300 passenger jet, registered as YL-AAR. It is the fourth Airbus A220-300 (formerly known as the Bombardier CSeries 300) received this year and four more new aircraft of the type are planned to join the airline’s fleet by the end of 2019. The latest aircraft, with serial number MSN 55053, is on 12-year operational lease from Avation PLC.
The airBaltic fleet now consists of 38 aircraft: 18 Airbus A220-300s, eight Boeing 737s and 12 Bombardier Q400Next Gen aircraft.
In 2018 airBaltic achieved €400 million sales revenue, whilst its net income grew by more than 40 per cent over 2017, reaching €5.4 million.
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