AirBaltic To Launch First Route to Morocco in Winter 2022/23

Rabat – Latvia’s flag carrier airline, AirBaltic, has announced its plans to launch a new route to Marrakech in the winter season of 2022/2023.

In an interview with Airways Magazine, AirBaltic’s CEO Martin Gauss noted that the new route will serve as the first African destination for the airline.

In addition to the new flight route, Gauss remarked that the Latvian airline will also seek to increase its flight frequencies and launch new connections to address “the additional capacity caused by the canceled routes” in Russia.

As noted by Gauss, the cancellation of flights in Russia has redirected travelers toward AirBaltic’s home base in Riga, which currently serves as a hub for flights to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

AirBaltic has operated a “single-type fleet of currently the greenest commercial aircraft in the skies – Airbus A220-300s,” said Gauss, adding that the company intends to increase the seat capacity of its entire fleet by summer 2023.

The increase in seat capacity aims to address the “noticeable overall increase in passenger demands” related to the global ease of COVID-19 restrictions, he stated.

However, the recent staff shortages and strikes in Europe have caused frequent disruptions to flight departures.

The staff shortage is a result of the major layoffs by airlines in the past two years, as they sought to cut costs amid record-breaking losses within the aviation sector throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, the European aviation sector is expected to suffer from a net loss of $3.9 billion despite the forecasted increase in demands, which would reach 82.7% of the 2019 levels. However, the fuel and labor costs would likely burden the sector as it edges closer to profitability in 2022.

Morocco’s aviation industry has also suffered from the increasing costs caused by the COVID crisis and accelerated by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Abdelhamid Addou, CEO of Royal Air Maroc, recently said that the “sky-rocketing” jet fuel prices are impeding the recovery of RAM’s activities, noting that fuel costs represent 25-30% of the company’s expenditures and would highly offset its profits this year.

Nonetheless, the easing of COVID restrictions and border reopenings have gradually helped revive the Moroccan aviation and tourism sectors.