Flydubai may divert its new Vilnius flights to Riga if smuggler balloons interfere with operations at the Lithuanian capital’s airport, a senior airline official has said as the carrier prepared to launch its first Dubai-Vilnius service.
“We come from a very volatile region ourselves, so we are constantly dealing with crises like this. We have a plan in place,” Jeyhun Efendi, Flydubai’s divisional senior vice president for commercial operations and e-commerce, told reporters in Vilnius on December 11.
“Because we have operations at Riga Airport, our hope is that we will be using this airport as a diversion point in case something like this happens,” he said.
If disruptions at Vilnius last, passengers will be transported onward by bus.
The airline will operate the route three times a week throughout the winter and summer seasons.
Efendi said Flydubai hoped to raise the profile of Lithuania and the wider Baltic region, which he said remained relatively unknown to many travellers due to limited past air service.
“Dubai will be a priority demand on this flight, but our aim is to make Lithuania and the Baltic States in general a popular destination,” he said. “Unfortunately, this part of the world is not that well known simply because there were not many operations.”
Flydubai also plans to start flights to Tallinn until next winter. Efendi noted that since launching flights to Poland in 2020, the airline had nearly tripled its services there.
Flydubai operates 97 aircraft and has nearly 300 more on order. The state-owned Emirati carrier had initially planned to begin Vilnius flights in late 2024 but delayed the launch due to an aircraft shortage. (LRT)