Flights between Rīga and Liepāja were suspended during the Covid pandemic. After the pandemic, discussions on the resumption of scheduled flights between Riga and Liepaja began immediately. According to Liepāja Municipality, there would be high demand for these, as many passengers previously welcomed the opportunity to get to and from Rīga within 45 minutes.
“Riga is the connecting element for business. We see that as the industry develops, there are also a lot of people, experts who go there to see what the quality of the business is, what the product is doing. These are people who use aviation transport,“ said Gunārs Ansiņš (Liepaja Party), Chairman of Liepāja City Council.
This summer, Liepaja will host the world rally championship stage and music festival Summer Sound, which could bring together just under 100 thousand visitors. As a result, airBaltic has decided to organize short-term flights.
“There is currently no information on other scheduled flights to Liepāja. They are not planned, but if this concept of short-term flights proves itself practically in life, then we are flexible enough to arrange these types of flights smoothly and introduce them in the future," said the airline's representative Augusts Zilberts.
Before the pandemic, planes with about 75 seats were flown to Liepāja, but the airline no longer has any. This means that only a plane with 145 passenger seats can go to Liepāja, and there are doubts that they would succeed in filling the planes. The small planes flying to Liepāja three times a week were generally not full.
“Without additional subsidies from the sidelines - whether from the local government or the state - such flights would not be profitable to operate,” Zilberts said.
Liepāja Municipality is interested in increasing the airport's revenues, because there is currently no regular passenger transport there, but maintenance costs are quite high. The airport has a budget of around one million euros per year. In April, about 150 thousand euros were allocated to Liepaja airport from the state budget for the modernization of technical equipment.
Last year, the airport recorded just under 5 thousand flights, more than 4,000 of which were conducted by pilot academy training planes and the rest by military aircraft and private jets.
