Airport, Crisis, Latvia, Transport

International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 18.04.2024, 06:11

airBaltic to fly with reduced fleet after Covid-19 crisis and only with Airbus aircraft

BC, Riga , 31.03.2020.Print version
In an interview with LETA, the chief executive officer of Latvian airline airBaltic Martin Gauss said that the airline will fly with a reduced fleet after the Covid-19 crisis and only with Airbus aircraft.

''We were planning on our fleet to be completely made up of Airbus planes anyways. We were planning to still use several Boeing 737-300 aircraft this year and possibly next year, but this has been concluded and we are not making any regular flights with Boeing aircraft anymore,'' Gauss said.


He also said that the airline has 12 Bombardier Q400 NextGen aircraft in its fleet as well at the moment. ''It is clear that we will discontinue the use of these planes as well in the future. We will focus on simplifying our activities and will only use Airbus aircraft in the future,'' Gauss said. 


He said that the airline will most likely recover to pre-crisis levels in 2021 or even later.


At the moment airBaltic has 22 Airbus A220 aircraft in its fleet.


''We can order up to another 18 planes. Thus, when our operation begins to see growth again, we will increase the number of Airbus aircraft in our fleet,'' Gauss said.


As reported, airBaltic carried 5.049 mln passengers in 2019, an increase of 22.1% against 2019. 


airBaltic serves over 70 destinations from Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius.


The airline's primary shareholder is the Latvian state, which holds 80.05% of the stock, while Danish businessman Lars Thuesen holds around 20% through his fully-owned Aircraft Leasing 1.






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