Linking the Baltics with Barents
airBaltic is launching four new flights to destinations in Barents Region making Riga the new hub for interconnecting flights between east and west in the north.
The four new destinations are Tromsø, Umeå, Rovaniemi and Arkhangelsk. From before, airBaltic operates two other flights to Barents destinations; Kuusamo and Oulu.
The route Rovaniemi – Riga will have flights four times a week, starting from May 4th. The two other already existing Finnish Barents destination Kuusamo will have three weekly flights to Riga starting from April 1st.
The flights to the biggest Swedish Barents city, Umeå, starts March 29th and will have four weekly flights the first two months and starting from May 31st, the Umeå – Riga route will be daily.
The route from the Latvian capital to Tromsø in northern Norway is airBaltic’s second attempt to gain passengers from Europe to the Arctic sea coast via the airline’s hub in Riga. The Tromsø route also starts in the end of March and will have three weekly flights. airBaltic operated the Riga - Tromsø flights also last summer.
The March edition of airBaltic’s inflight magazine Baltic Outlook reports that Arkhangelsk in northern Russia also will be included in the airliner’s route network from this summer. No details about number of flights or the date for the first flight is presented. With Arkhangelsk as destination, airBaltic will cover all the biggest northern cities in each of the four Barents countries. Non of the other larger airlines operating in the region have such network linking all four Barents countries in the north via one hub.
Arkhangelsk has not had any direct regular international flights since SAS operated the route Stockholm – Arkhangelsk from 1997 to 1999 with three weekly flights. The airline company Nordavia, formerly know as Aeroflot Nord and before that Arkhangelsk airline, operates the only east-west flight in the northern part of the Barents Region from Arkhangelsk, via Murmansk to Tromsø. The customs and passport controls are in Murmansk, making the Arkhangelsk – Murmansk route domestic, although it is the same plane all the way.
The airBaltic fleet currently consists of 31 aircraft - 2 Boeing 757-200, 10 Boeing 737-500s, 8 Boeing 737-300 and 11 Fokker-50s.
