Over 238 thousand passengers, that is 17 per cent or nearly 35 thousand more than during the same period last year, travelled through Tallinn Airport in April. With new regular routes and extra flights, the airlines added 11% seats to the market, with the number of passengers still outpacing this. This shows confidence and general wellbeing of consumers and provides a good outlook also for the near future. When the busiest weeks in air traffic usually remain in the peak season of flights and vacations in July, and the year 2017 could be considered as laborious, then in the last week of April, the number of passengers exceeded even the figures of the busiest week of the previous year.
From regular routes, Warsaw, which has become a major hub for Nordica, increased the most in April compared to last year. The growth has concentrated mainly on bigger routes, such as Riga, Helsinki, Stockholm or London; while it is more modest or lacking on routes with smaller volumes (such as Vienna, Brussels or Paris). In April, Nordica reopened its seasonal direct flights to Nice and Split and new connections to Copenhagen and Kyiv Zhuliany airport. Altogether, there were regular flights to 32 destinations, with average seat occupancy being 71% in April. In four months, Nordica has served 22% and airBaltic 16% of all passengers, with the share of low-cost airlines remaining also at 16%.
The number of charter passengers has grown faster than that of regular routes: while in Q1 it was on average 27%, then in April even 48%. Charter flight destinations correspond traditionally to the season – one-third of package travellers flew to Antalya, one-third to the resorts in Egypt and the rest were divided between Spain, Greece, Morocco and other countries.
