Latvian airline Air Baltic is planning a realignment of its business model for 2026. The focus will be less on ACMI (Air, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance) and more on operating on its own account.
After temporarily providing up to 44 percent of its flight capacity to other airlines – primarily within the Lufthansa Group – through wet lease agreements in the summer of 2025, the company plans to strengthen its own brand presence next year through a comprehensive network expansion. Despite the close partnership with Lufthansa, most recently demonstrated by short-term deployments for Austrian Airlines following the latter's breach of contract with Braathens Regional Airways, the focus is now on developing new direct connections from the Baltic states.
The expansion program for 2026 includes the addition of numerous new routes. From its home hub in Riga, the airline will serve Antalya, Gothenburg, Kaunas, Oulu, and Warsaw. Tallinn and Vilnius are also experiencing significant growth: In Estonia, Athens, Hamburg, and Vienna will be added to the network, while from the Lithuanian capital, new routes to Chisinau and Zurich will be offered. Particularly noteworthy is the strategic connection to the Lufthansa Group's hubs, which further strengthens the existing cooperation despite the airline's focus on its own scheduled flights. In addition to the new destinations, the airline plans to significantly increase frequencies on over 30 existing routes.
The background to this development is the successful stabilization of the company through its ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) business. In the third quarter of 2025, Air Baltic completed approximately 10.500 flights for third-party customers, creating a solid financial foundation for its planned own-account expansion. Industry analyses indicate that Air Baltic's use of a uniform Airbus A220-300 fleet provides it with a cost advantage, generating competitive benefits both in the wet-lease market and on its own routes. The airline is leveraging this efficiency to position itself as a leading provider in the Baltic Sea region while simultaneously improving connectivity between the Baltic states and Central Europe.
Further research in the aviation sector confirms that the capacity expansion in Vilnius and Tallinn is a direct response to the increasing demand in the business travel and city tourism sectors. While Air Baltic often stepped in as a "stopgap" for larger carriers in the past due to staffing or technical shortages, its current fleet of over 45 aircraft now allows it to operate both third-party flights and its own route expansion simultaneously. The strategic inclusion of destinations such as Zurich and Vienna also demonstrates the airline's commitment to ensuring high-quality connecting services for passengers from the Baltic region and reducing its reliance on feeder services for partner airlines.