AirBaltic to temporarily suspend operations

Latvia’s flag carrier and the largest carrier in the Baltic region, airBaltic, has announced that it will be suspending flights effective 17 March until 14 April, 2020. The new announcement affects all the carrier’s flights, including those from Lithuania and Estonia.

airBaltic’s fleet mainly consists of Airbus A220 aircraft, formerly known as the C Series program. Photo by Ernest Leung | AeroNewsX

The move follows a government-implemented ban on all international flights arriving into Latvia.

Martin Gauss, CEO of airBaltic said: “The safety and health of our passengers, our employees and the society is above all!”

Gauss continued: “airBaltic is working intensively to assist all passengers affected. Due to the amount of rebookings needed, we ask for understanding from our customers that we are doing our utmost to deal with this extraordinary situation,”

airBaltic had, earlier this month, announced a plan to reduce staff numbers by 250 in an attempt to deal with the financial impact associated with the COVID-19 disease, now recognised as a pandemic.

On 14 April, 2020, only a number of services will be resumed, as the carrier has already planned service suspensions through the end of April. This includes flights to Italy, namely those to Venice and Milan which were shut on 9 March. Flights to Tel Aviv have been suspended until the end of May.

Thereafter, the carrier will slowly begin resuming its flights to Italy. For example, for the entire month of May, airBaltic will operate just two weekly flights between Riga and Milan, a 50% capacity reduction in comparison to normal Milan operations.