Lunchtime Discussion with Laila Odiņa, Chairperson of the Board of Riga International Airport
Thursday, May 20, 2021 - 12:00
Lunchtime Discussion with Ms Laila Odiņa, Chairperson of the Board of Riga International Airport was held on Thursday 20 May. The event was organised in cooperation with Irish and Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Latvia and was supported by Law Office Ellex Klavins.
During the discussion, Ms Laila Odiņa gave an overview of Riga International Airport’s plans for growth and planned timeline for the projects in the pipeline as well as the influence of the pandemic upon the strategic developments of the airport. According to already confirmed mid-term plans, Airport will grow its capacity to serve up to 12million passengers annually by 2030. The key development projects for the years to come are the new Passenger Terminal, new ACT tower, Rail Baltica Station connecting airport to Riga Central station, as well as the new logistics terminal. It was confirmed that DHL CargoLogisticsCentre will be opened in June this year and airBalticBaltic CargoHub being constructed from 2022 – 2024.
Ms Odiņa informed that Riga Airport is open for partnership with strategic investors, PPP partners, developers, airlines and global operators to cooperate in developing RIX BusinessPark & RIX CargoCity as well as new passenger and cargo route programmes. During the Q&A session, participants asked quite a few questions, some of which were related to plans for developing direct intercontinental flights from Riga, recently announced plans from British Airways to reopen their flights from Riga to the UK this summer as well as Ryanair plans of having two aircraft based at Riga International Airport in the nearest future.
We would like to thank Ms Laila Odiņa for finding time to speak to chamber members as well as Mr Andris Lazdiņš, Associate Partner, Co-Head of Dispute Resolution practice at Ellex Klavins for moderating the discussion.