Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Latvia’s leading airline, airBaltic, announced a significant expansion of its winter 2025-26 flight network, a move poised to impact travelers and the travel industry across Northern and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. This expansion included the launch of three new international routes and an increase in flight frequencies on key existing services, underscoring the airline’s strategic response to evolving seasonal travel demands. The network growth promised enhanced travel convenience, diversification of leisure options, and stronger connectivity for a broad traveler base spanning the Baltics, Scandinavia, and other European markets.
airBaltic’s winter network expansion was framed as a deliberate, data-driven effort to address the seasonal patterns of passenger demand, leveraging extensive market analysis and customer feedback. The new routes introduced aimed to provide northern and eastern European travelers with greater access to warm, sunny destinations during the colder months, while simultaneously supporting winter sports tourism through sustained and extended connections to Alpine and Nordic ski hubs.
Among the headline changes, airBaltic introduced three new direct routes for the winter season, running from late October 2025 to late March 2026. These routes were designed to enhance leisure travel options for those seeking respite from the Baltic region’s harsh winter climate.
The first new route connected Riga, Latvia’s capital, with Faro in Portugal’s Algarve region—a renowned destination famous for its mild winter climate, scenic coastline, and golf tourism. This addition was expected to attract vacationers seeking warm weather and outdoor activities during the northern hemisphere’s winter.
The second new service linked Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, with Madeira, Portugal’s subtropical island famed for its lush landscapes and mild temperatures year-round. This route offered an appealing option for travelers desiring a more exotic, nature-oriented winter escape within a relatively short flight from the Baltics.
Completing the trio of new routes was a connection from Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Islands—a popular winter sun destination—to Ljubljana, Slovenia’s charming capital known for its historic sites and gateway to the Alps. This unique route aimed at boosting inbound leisure tourism to Slovenia, capitalizing on the growing interest in combining mild coastal breaks with Central European cultural and outdoor experiences.
These new services were designed not only to meet seasonal demand but also to diversify airBaltic’s portfolio, enabling it to compete more effectively with other European carriers offering winter sun travel options.
In addition to these new routes, airBaltic planned to increase flight frequencies from the Baltic capitals—Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius—to Amsterdam, a crucial European hub. The frequency boost included 19 weekly flights from Riga and 14 weekly flights each from Tallinn and Vilnius. This expansion was significant because Amsterdam serves as a key transfer point for flights across Europe and internationally, meaning travelers from the Baltics would benefit from easier and more flexible connections to hundreds of onward destinations.
Furthermore, airBaltic intended to bolster its presence in the Middle East, particularly in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Daily flights from Riga and a quadrupling of weekly flights from Vilnius to Dubai marked a strategic move to capitalize on growing demand for travel between Northern Europe and the Gulf region. This frequency increase underscored Dubai’s importance as a commercial, tourism, and transit hub, offering Baltic travelers access to global networks beyond Europe.
Such connectivity improvements were poised to facilitate both leisure and business travel, encouraging greater outbound tourism from the Baltic states and increased inbound traffic from the Middle East and beyond.
Underpinning airBaltic’s strategic winter network planning were findings from its 2025 annual customer survey, which gathered responses from nearly 12,000 direct customers across more than 25 countries. Conducted through online interviews in March 2025, the survey provided valuable data on passenger travel habits, preferences, and satisfaction levels, reinforcing the airline’s strong market presence in the Baltics and neighboring Finland.
According to the survey results, airBaltic remained the preferred airline for 89% of respondents, a testament to its strong brand loyalty and operational reliability. Market-specific preference rates were even higher: 96% in Latvia, 93% in Estonia, and 90% in Finland, indicating the airline’s dominant regional position.
These insights were crucial for validating airBaltic’s winter network choices, ensuring that new and extended routes aligned with customer desires for leisure and business travel, as well as reinforcing the airline’s commitment to meeting evolving market needs.
Extending Popular Summer Routes into Winter for Greater Flexibility
In addition to new routes and frequency increases, airBaltic opted to extend the operational periods of select summer routes into the winter season, offering travelers more consistent and flexible leisure travel options. Specifically, flights from Riga to Pisa (Italy) and Porto (Portugal) were planned to continue through November 2025, bridging the shoulder season into winter.
Moreover, the Riga-Catania (Sicily, Italy) route was scheduled to commence earlier than usual in March 2026, further expanding options for early spring leisure travel. These extensions not only responded to traveler demand for sunny, culturally rich destinations but also helped stabilize year-round traffic flows for the airline.
Tags: airbaltic, aviation, baltic, connectivity, estonia, Europe, latvia, LEISURE, lithuania, new routes, Portugal, Slovenia, spain, Tourism, UAE, WinterTravel
