Having experienced a successful winter season in the Slovak town of Poprad near the High Tatra Mountains, Latvian air carrier airBaltic will continue regular seasonal flights between Riga, the capital city of Latvia, and the city of Poprad, in eastern Slovakia. There will also be a new connection added, being the city of Warsaw, the capital city of Poland. Poprad-Tatry Airport director Ivana Herkeľová announced this on Tuesday. "We transported 1,900 passengers between Poprad and Riga during the first [winter] season, of which 1,500 people were heading to the High and Low Tatras. The carrier had expected to transport 2,600 passengers, but I believe that the lower number was due to a number of individual bookings instead of group bookings", said Herkeľová. The planes were filled to more than 70 percent of their capacity, which isn't a bad result for the first season, believes Herkeľová. "My dream is to prepare this route as a year-round one. Unfortunately, this isn't possible during the current season, but we've already launched talks with the carrier to do this in the future", said Herkeľová. Poprad-Tatry Airport currently has a regular year-round connection to Luton Airport (positioned outside of London) featuring four flights weekly.
Meanwhile, the Vienna-based airline Niki has canned their plans for expansion in the Slovak market. In December 2014, Niki grandly announced their plan of what would be the world's shortest flight, being from Vienna (Austria), to Bratislava (Slovakia), a flight which would take only around five minutes. Now, however, the Austrian carrier has cancelled its plans to operate such flights from Bratislava. "The parent company, the German carrier Air Berlin, has changed management structure. The new management has set other priorities", stated the Director of Bratislava Airport Ivan Trhlík, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for Niki. Trhlík added, however, that Bratislava airport had received interest from another low-cost carrier.
