Riga International Airport closes the year with another record - today, on 28 December, the Airport welcomes this year's six millionth passenger. Lithuanian Egle Marcinkeviciute, along with her family, arrived at Riga Airport with a flight from Copenhagen operated by the Latvian national airline airBaltic to continue her trip to Vilnius with a transfer flight.
The recent ambitious investments in the airport infrastructure, upgrading the aerodrome and improving passenger services, have made Riga even more attractive both to airlines and travellers. As a result of a targeted and successful development strategy, the Airport has had a successful year: it managed to increase its passenger figures by 12%, while the cargo volumes went up by one fourth. Riga Airport continues to strengthen its position as a convenient transit hub to travel to further destinations. This year, the number of passengers in this segment has grown by about 30%.
“Already in summer we could expect that this would be a very successful year. Passenger records were broken each month: in July, the number of passengers exceeded 646 thousand, which means that we served almost 21 thousand arriving and departing passengers every day. This enabled Riga Airport to enter the TOP 5 of Europe's Fastest Growing Airports this summer. Also, in the winter season, passenger figures showed a positive trend,” says Ilona Līce, Chairperson of the Board of Riga International Airport.
To offer even more extensive shopping and service opportunities, this year new stores and cafés were opened in the departures terminal, and travellers were offered unprecedented opportunities: a SPA and beauty salon, as well as a barber shop.
“I am happy and satisfied that the Airport is becoming more and more attractive not only to passengers, but also to airlines. A total of almost 20 new destinations from Riga Airport were opened this year; several airlines have already announced new routes for the next year - Lisbon, Kutaisi, Gdansk, Bordeaux, Malaga and others. We hope that passengers will appreciate it and will choose our Airport again,” says Līce.
Riga Airport Passenger Records by Year:
- Passenger No. 1 000 000 – 13 December 2004;
- Passenger No. 2 000 000 – 17 October 2006;
- Passenger No. 3 000 000 – 10 December 2007;
- Passenger No. 4 000 000 – 21 December 2009;
- Passenger No. 5 000 000 – 21 December 2011;
- Passenger No. 6 000 000 – 28 December 2017.
Riga International Airport is the largest air traffic hub in the Baltics. The 20 airlines operating at Riga Airport offer more than 70 destinations in the winter season and almost 90 in the summer season. In the first 11 months of 2017, Riga Airport handled over 5.6 million passengers - nearly 45% of the entire Baltic air passenger traffic.
