Airport, Estonia, Latvia, Transport

Andrus Aljas.

He added, however, that if Estonian Air would be liquidated, the number of flights from Tallinn would fall by half.

“The enterprise will not be able to work for long by earning a loss. Unless Estonian Air will reach a profit, there will be a doubt whether this enterprise is at all necessary,” he explained.

“Should Estonian Air disappear, half of the direct flight links to Tallinn would disappear as well,” said Aljas. He added that last year, the global trends worked against the enterprise and this year will be a difficult one as well, but said that as soon as the situation will improve, the company will be above water yet again.

When asked about the competition with Air Baltic, Aljas noted that lately, the Latvian enterprise has been a major rival for Estonian Air, but the latter has not lost any market share to the former. “We have different business models. Air Baltic took the direction years ago to become in a longer-term perspective one of the biggest airlines in the Nordic countries,” he said, noting that to that end, the Latvian State has via the Riga Airport invested a lot of money into the aviation enterprise, both directly and indirectly.

“We are not quite as fortunate, our business model is to focus on the local market and to service the demand for outbound and inbound flights to Estonia,” added Aljas.