Unexpected but a nice addition to the range of Eastern European destination. However, those of us who have been around for a fair while remember services to Bucharest (2 weekly by Tarom), Moscow (2 weekly by Aeroflot) and Kyiv (via Lviv or Ivanofrancovsk) by Air Ukraine International….perhaps MAN could expend some energy in enticing those carriers to come back (or perhaps they could be persuaded to get Lithuanian Airlines to repeat their small charter servuce from 1992ish).

Anyway, here’s how the passenger statistics for the existing services look and are taken from the CAA’s June provisional passenger figures, (though the number of flights and average passengers per flight having been guestimated by myself):

Minsk = 454, 8 flights, 56.75 average
Split = 884, 8 flights, 110.50 average
Pula = 1173, 8 flights, 146.63 average
Tallinn = 1553, 26 flights, 59.73 average
Riga = 2128, 26 flights, 81.85 average
Warsaw = 2386, 52 flights, 45.88 average
Ljubljana = 2490, 18 flights, 138.33 average
Krakow = 2564, 24 flights, 106.83 average
Budapest = 3693, 34 flights, 108.62 average
Dubrovnik = 3841, 42 flights, 91.45 average
Prague = 19391, 206 flights, 94.13 average

Interesting to note that airBaltic’s Riga service was attracting only 40 to 50 passengers a flight last years so it’s nice to see traffic to pick up substantially.

David