The announcement marks a strategic shift for airBaltic from cutting Vilnius routes in favor of Riga ones and marks a major victory for the Lithuanian transport ministry's goal of revitalizing Vilnius International after the loss of routes the flyLAL collapse caused. Photo used courtesy of airBaltic.

VILNIUS — Starting December Latvian airline airBaltic will fly five direct routes from Vilnius International after the airport drastically dropped its fees, becoming one of the cheapest airports in the region.

Vilnius International went from being one of the most expensive airports in Europe to now being cheaper than Riga International Airport, which was forced by Latvia’s Competition Council to remove anti-competitive subsidies earlier this year.

Under the initiative of the Lithuanian transport ministry, tariffs will be lowered at the state-owned Vilnius International Airport from Dec. 1. and airBaltic will soon sign a new agreement with the airport, the company said in a press release.

After losing direct routes to these cities following January’s collapse of Lithuanian national carrier flyLAL, flights to Berlin, Paris and Munich will start from mid-December and routes to Amsterdam and Rome are planned for early January 2010. airBaltic will also evaluate opening four other routes during the summer of 2010, it said.

The reduced tariffs in Vilnius allow for a volume-based system of discounts of the same type that was available to airlines in Riga until November of this year.

“I’ve been saying it for the last five years that Vilnius airport needs to decrease their fees to get the critical mass needed. No one listened for the first five years, but we were pleasantly surprised that they went with such a drastic reduction. They needed this to compete,” Tadas Vizgirda, airBaltic’s head of Lithuanian operations told Baltic Reports.

Vizgirda said that even though it is now cheaper to fly through Vilnius, it is unlikely that the Latvian state-owned airline will start using the airport as a transfer hub as is now seen in Riga.

“Riga airport infrastructure wise is more user friendly for transfers than Vilnius. It is not a transfer airport and they need to address this,” he said. “Let’s say five years from now, or however long it takes, we plan to be the Baltic airline and and use the capitals for transfers and the smaller airports for regional traffic.”

The lowering of Vilnius’ airport tariffs comes too late for this year’s Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009 project, which should have been a bumper year for tourism. Instead tourism dropped by 22 percent according to the latest figures from the Department of Statistics as the lack of direct flights it inconvenient and more expensive for foreign tourists to reach the Lithuanian capital.

Following the collapse of the national Lithuanian carrier flyLAL, airBaltic canceled many of its routes from Vilnius in preference to transferring passengers through its main hub Riga.

Now airBaltic’s CEO thinks the airport is looking more attractive.

“The Vilnius airport has begun very targeted policies with the lowering of its tariffs. This will allow airBaltic to launch new non-stop flights, and other airlines will also be attracted to the Lithuanian capital city. We are convinced that next year the Vilnius airport will have every chance to become the most rapidly-growing airport in Europe,” airBaltic President and CEO Bertolt Flick said in the press release.

The primary shareholders of airBaltic are the Latvian state which controls 52.6 percent and Flick’s company Baltijas Aviācijas Sistēmas with 47.2 percent.