Latvian airline airBaltic saw passenger numbers increase by 22 per cent in May, carrying 386,353 passengers for the month compared to the same month a year ago.

Passengers numbers hit 1.45 million for the first five months, also up 22 per cent compared to the same period in 2017.

Martin Gauss, chief executive officer of airBaltic, said: “The summer season is officially here, and we expect even larger passenger figures during the upcoming three months. We appreciate that more and more passengers choose airBaltic, showing their trust in the reliable service we provide.”

In May, the airline operated 5,149 flights, up 14 per cent compared to May 2017 while a total of 21,445 flights were performed during the first five months of 2018.

The airline’s load factor, which represents the number of passengers as a proportion of the number of available seats, hit 75 per cent in May, whereas in the first five months, load factor stood at 71 per cent.

The flight punctuality indicator reached a level of 88.8 per cent in May, a one percentage point drop compared to the same month last year. The 15 minute flight punctuality indicator for airBaltic during the first five months of 2018 reached a level of 90 per cent, meaning 90 out of every 100 airBaltic flights departed at the planned time or with a delay of no more than 15 minutes.

AirBaltic serves over 70 destinations from Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius, offering the largest variety of destinations and convenient connections via Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, the CIS and the Middle East.

For summer 2018, airBaltic has introduced eight new destinations from Riga - Malaga, Lisbon, Split, Bordeaux, Gdansk, Almaty as well as Sochi and Kaliningrad. In addition, airBaltic launched a new direct route connecting Tallinn and London. - TradeArabia News Service