Demand for aviation services on the rise again - SmartLynx

• Published date: 20 May 2022
• Publication title: LETA

RIGA, May 20 (LETA) - The aviation market is not yet back on the pre-pandemic level but demand for aviation services is growing, Zygimantas Surintas, CEO of Latvia-registered company SmartLynx Airlines (SmartLynx), told LETA.

Surintas said that the aviation market has seen strong turbulences in recent years. In 2020, this business nearly ceased to exist. SmartLynx, too, reduced its fleet from 22 to 12 aircraft, but already at the end of 2020 the company's fleet had grown to 35 aircraft, as it was decided that the crisis is also a time of opportunities for resumed growth.

Since 40 percent of our costs are related to airplanes, we secured favorable terms of aircraft use in the long term, because the aircraft leasing market was also affected by the pandemic, said Surintas.

The SmartLynx CEO indicated that the time of pandemic posed a lot of other challenges as well, and two years after the start of the pandemic the aviation market was still not functioning as it used to before the...