Martin Gauss, CEO of airBaltic said: “We are delighted to add Yekaterinburg as the fourteenth new destination to our summer 2020 route map. By launching flights from Riga to Yekaterinburg, we are offering one additional gateway between Europe and Russia and vice versa.”
Yekaterinburg will be the sixth destination airBaltic serves in Russia, in addition to existing connections between Riga and Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Sochi and Kazan. The airline said in 2019 it carried 16% more passengers than the previous year on its Russian routes.
airBaltic will fly from Riga to Yekaterinburg twice weekly using an Airbus A220-300 aircraft for a flight that will last just over three hours.
Among the 14 new routes for the summer season 2020 route map will be four new direct destinations from Tallinn, Estonia, and five new destinations from Vilnius, Lithuania. A complete schedule of airBaltic flights and tickets for the new destinations are already available on the company's website at www.airbaltic.com.
If you'd like to find out more about Russia's fourth-largest city, there is information on the official Russian state tourism portal. It includes the fact that Yekaterinburg was named after Russian emperor Peter the Great's wife, Yekaterina, who later became Empress Catherine I after Peter's death. Fun fact: Catherine had very humble beginnings and grew up in the Latvian city of Alūksne, then known as Marienburg.