Airport, China, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Transport

"Among other things, the new airBaltic terminal will have a capacity of servicing five long-haul wide-body aircraft at a time," said Vanags.

Latvian airline airBaltic has received 125 architectural concepts for the international design contest of the new airBaltic terminal and presented ten of the shortlisted architectural concepts for a public vote. The total investment in the new terminal is expected to be 90 million to 100 million euros, writes LETA.

The jury is made up of a number of distinguished participants, including British architect Marcus Lee, who designed Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in London and has received the Stirling Award for the design of the airport in Madrid. He is joined by Irish engineer Dervilla Mitchell, who also worked on Terminal 5 at Heathrow, Swedish architect Åke Bejne, who is a former chairman of the Swedish Architects Association, Dace Putnina, the founder and co-owner of the KUBS architectural firm, Janis Dripe, the chief architect of the city of Riga, and Bertolt Flick, the President and CEO of airBaltic.

The contest is being managed on behalf of airBaltic by Ove Arup and Partners, one of the world’s largest engineering firms.

As reported, Estonian Riigikogu economy committee chairman Urmas Klaas said on October 18 that the Tallinn Airport must change and become more the travel centre of the whole Estonia.

Tallinn Airport has presented to the Riigikogu economy committee the development plans. As officials stated, since air connections form an important part of Estonia's business environment, it must be possible to fly from Tallinn to all the more important European business centres and back during one day.

They also agreed that Tallinn Airport should focus on becoming a centre of Asian flights and Loik said that the airport has held talks with two Chinese aviation companies.