The Latvian airline Air Baltic has withdrawn numerous flight connections for September 2022 and informed passengers who had already purchased tickets about the cancellations. The background is that the supply of spare parts is tight.

From September, the carrier will temporarily no longer offer flights from the Lithuanian capital to Oslo, London Gatwick, Dublin and Hamburg. The offer will also be reduced from the Riga home base, but the cuts will be smaller than in Vilnius. Frequencies are temporarily reduced on numerous routes.

“Unfortunately, global supply chain issues have also impacted the availability of some aircraft parts. These parts are required for Air Baltic aircraft. For this reason, many airlines will restructure the entire flight network in the coming months. This is a global problem in the airline industry that leasing an aircraft cannot solve,” the company said when asked.

It remains to be seen whether other Airbus A220 operators will also be affected by the problematic availability of spare parts, according to Air Baltic. For example, the Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss uses numerous machines of this type. The Latvian carrier is the first airline to speak publicly about the issue.