Abu Dhabi Airport welcomed Latvian airline airBaltic on its inaugural flight between Riga and Abu Dhabi.   

A welcome reception of the Bombardier CS 300 was held at Abu Dhabi’s VIP Terminal attended by The Ambassador of the UAE to Latvia Hanan Al Aleeli and The Ambassador of Latvia to UAE Astra Kurme; Wolfgnag Reuss, senior vice president Network Management Air Baltic; and Yousif Al Hammadi, vice president Business Development at Abu Dhabi Airports.

Al Hammadi stated: “This new partnership is a further edition to Abu Dhabi Airports expanding network and moves us closer to becoming the world leading airport group.”  

Kurme added: “50 years ago, Abu Dhabi was a desert village, now it is a leading nation in worldwide technology and revolution. Every airline in the world would like to land in Abu Dhabi. AirBaltic did it. I hope that this airline will bring our nations closer."

On the sidelines, Wolfgang Reuss spoke to TTN, saying: Air Baltic will have four flights a week starting from today, and we will be flying our brand new CS 300. We believe that this aircraft is a state-of-the-art short to medium range aircraft with long range capabilities - having a maximum flight time of up to 6.5 hours. And that is why we have chosen to expand again in the medium and long haul market, with Abu Dhabi as our obvious first choice."

"This new route has been already successful with the inaugural flight flying at full capacity and glights for November and December at 50 to 60 per cent seat load factor. Looking ahead, we anticipatea good first quarter in 2018," he said.
 
"Our vision for expansion in this medium to long haul range will certainly be more into Russia as Riga is located closer to the the nation. We also want to further expand in the CIS countries and increase capacity into existing markets like Tbilisi and also the European network."

"We have upgraded a lot of our fleet. We now have seven CS 300 and will have eight by the end of the year, and within five years, we want to roll the whole fleet over, whether it is a single type fleet or a two type fleet," he said. - TradeArabia News Service