Riga Airport plans to service 7.1-7.2 million passengers this year, said Laila Odina, Chairwoman of the Board of Riga Airport, on Friday during the "900 seconds" program on TV3.
According to her, the closed markets of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have a significant impact on the number of serviced passengers. If flights from Riga to Dubai and Tel Aviv are not secured by the end of the year, the airport will miss approximately 100,000 serviced passengers.
However, the greatest influence on the number of serviced passengers comes from the rise in aviation fuel prices, which forces airlines to reconsider their flight routes. "This means that new airlines are coming to Riga Airport very slowly and in very small numbers," she said, emphasizing that the high fuel price will greatly affect the situation in the long term.
In light of the financial problems of the Latvian national airline airBaltic, Riga Airport has developed several action scenarios.
"The survival of airBaltic is, of course, very important to us because airBaltic accounts for 58% of our market share. Undoubtedly, it also represents significant revenue for us - about 40%, but we have scenarios for how we would emerge from this situation. This would not happen immediately; it would take some time, but it certainly would not be critical for the airport in the long term," said Odina.
At Riga Airport, 1.997 million passengers were serviced in the first four months of this year, which is 1% less than in the corresponding period last year.
Last year, Riga Airport serviced 7.111 million passengers, which corresponds to the level of 2024, but compared to the pre-COVID 2019, the number of passengers serviced at Riga Airport last year was 9% lower.
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