OREANDA-NEWS. For the summer season, Latvian airline airBaltic has introduced six new warm-weather destinations, added flights to major airports, and returned popular cities on the Mediterranean, Caspian and Black Sea coast to its routemap, achieving considerable improvements in ticket sales.

Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “We have achieved very strong forward bookings. We are delighted to see that our customers value our better product – today they have purchased twice as many tickets for the summer months compared to a year ago. We are encouraged by this to make further improvements beyond the summer season.”

For summer 2013, airBaltic has introduced six new destinations - Prague (Czech Republic), Heviz-Balaton (Hungary), Olbia (Sardinia, Italy), Rijeka (Croatia), Larnaca (Cyprus), and Malta.

In February 2013, airBaltic operated 2,944 flights, or 12% less than in February 2012 when airBaltic operated 3,338 flights. The airline carried 158,558 passengers in February its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, CIS and the Middle East. The airline’s load factor, which represents the number of passengers as a proportion of the number of available seats, in February 2013 was at a level of 62%. The 15-minute flight punctuality indicator for airBaltic was at a level of 84.6% in February 2013. This means that 84 of every 100 airBaltic flights in February departed at the planned time or with a delay of no more than 15 minutes.