airBaltic to fly nonstop from Riga to Tartu

On July 3, the Latvian airline airBaltic will launch nonstop flights between Riga and the second largest city in Estonia, Tartu, offering convenient connections to destinations in Western Europe, Scandinavia, the CIS and the Mediterranean region.

airBaltic will offer nonstop flights from Riga to Tartu four times a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The flights will be offered on Fokker 50 aircraft and will last 50 minutes. One-way ticket prices start at LVL 29 (EURO 41), including airport and transaction fees. The route schedule is available on the company’s homepage at airbaltic.com.

airBaltic Chief Commercial Officer Tero Taskila: "We are delighted that airBaltic will write history as the first airline to offer an international route from the Tartu airport. airBaltic is the second biggest carrier in Estonia and we naturally want to offer extra convenience for our customers in Tartu by opening this new route. It means that people from Southern Estonia can travel via the Riga airport to destinations such as Berlin, Zurich, Venice, Vienna, Moscow, Tashkent, and others. Tartu is a beautiful destination and the new airBaltic flight will attract more foreign travellers from Western Europe, Scandinavia, Mediterranean region and CIS."

The new route offers very convenient transit connections through Riga, to and from final destinations in Western Europe, the CIS, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean region.

In the summer of 2009, airBaltic is offering more than 50 nonstop routes to Aalesund, Almaty, Athens, Amsterdam, Baku, Barcelona, Bergen, Berlin, Billund, Brussels, Zurich, Dublin, Dushanbe, Dusseldorf, Yerevan, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Hannover, Helsinki, Kaliningrad, Kaunas, Kiev, Copenhagen, Kishinev, Kuopio, London, Linkoping, Milan, Minsk, Moscow, Munich, Nice, Odessa, Oslo, Oulu, Palanga, Paris, Rome, St.Petersburg, Simferopol, Istanbul, Stavanger, Stockholm, Tallinn, Tartu, Tashkent, Tampere, Tbilisi, Tel Aviv, Tromso, Turku, Venice, Vienna, Vilnius and Geneva.

Tartu is the second biggest city in Estonia and the capital city of the country’s southern region. It is seen as the intellectual and cultural centre for Estonia. The University of Tartu is the oldest and most distinguished institution of higher education in the country. Among well-known tourism objects in Tartu are St John’s Church, Dome Square, the University of Tartu Museum of Art (which is the oldest art museum in Estonia), the British Park on Toomemägi Hill, along with the cathedral that is one of the oldest architectural monuments in the region.