On the 20^th of February the airline Air Lituanica welcomes its 200 thousandth passenger. Over 60% of Air Lituanica passengers are foreigners, while a half of all passengers travel for business purposes.

“Over 60% of Air Lituanica passengers are foreigners which clearly shows that we are achieving our mission – improving Lithuania’s accessibility by air”, says Simonas Bartkus, Commercial Director at Air Lituanica. “It is a public secret that potential investors pay major attention to transport connections with a potential country while analysing the markets. Where there are no possibilities to arrive in a day or two, handle the important matters and leave, the immediate conclusion is that communication would be especially complex with such country thus the issue of investments should be thought out.”

Reklāma

According to Artūras Stankevičius, Director of Vilnius Airport, promoting foreigners to arrive in Lithuania is important for the whole country. “We are really pleased that such a young airline company as Air Lituanica has achieved this result in quite short period. We are sure the insightful planning of new directions contributed to that as well. We believe that by acting together we will continue promoting not only foreigners’ arrival here, but also improving the image of our country”, says Mr. Stankevičius.

Foreign investments and tourism are the basis for the economic growth of a country – new jobs are created, advanced technology and management models are implemented, hotel, restaurant and entertainment business is growing. As the State Tourism Department estimates, the average cost of one trip to Lithuania for one person (foreigner) amounts to EUR 359.70/LTL 1,242, thus it can be assumed that Air Lituanica passengers having arrived in Vilnius have already spent over EUR 20 million / LTL 69 million.

According to the calculations of the Airports Council International, taking into account all the factors the overall impact of air transport to Lithuanian economy is quite significant – almost 12 thousand jobs and 420 million euro of gross value added. One million passengers account for almost 3 thousand jobs (directly – 950), thus, indirectly, Air Lituanica operation has already established about 500 jobs.

Air Lituanica also encourages the arrival of tourists and investors by taking care of simpler purchase of tickets – as of now they are also distributed through Galileo ticket distribution system owned by the U.S. company Travelport which sells around 22% of airlines tickets worldwide. Such decision of the company is especially relevant to travellers from North America, Southeast Asia and the Near East. Air Lituanica predicts the development of sales channels will raise the number of passengers and this year it will be more than 200 thousand.

Currently Air Lituanica operates flights from Vilnius International Airport to the main airports of Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Munich, Paris, Billund and Tallinn; as of 26 January it started the flights to Stockholm and from 30 April it will connect Lithuania to Germany with yet another direct flight to Hamburg. Air Lituanica flights are operated by 86-seal Embraer 175, 49-seat Embraer 145 and 46-seat ATR42 type aircrafts.