Estonian Air Boosts Amsterdam Capacity

Baltic carrier Estonian Air is to significantly increase capacity on the Tallinn – Amsterdam route from September 5 with the introduction of an additional four weekly flights between the two European capitals. The airline currently offers a daily morning service – five flights operated by Bombardier CRJ900s and two by Boeing 737-500s. However, this autumn it will introduce a new evening rotation on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, flown by a CRJ900. This represents a 49 per cent increase in seat capacity.

“Amsterdam is a very attractive tourist destination, business center and also a strong transit airport in co-operation with KLM. In combination with our new and efficient CRJ900NG aircraft, it gives us a good reason to add frequencies,” said Rauno Parras, Vice President Commercial, Estonian Air. “Amsterdam airport is very comfortable and customer-friendly, and it's closeness to the city makes visiting city center possible even for transit passengers with longer waiting time.“

Estonian Air is currently the only operator on the route and operates a full codeshare with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. An estimated 42,000 O&D passengers travelled between the two cities last year. However, the analysis needs to be broken down into two six month periods to get a better understanding of the data, as Estonian Air only inaugurated direct flights at the end of October 2010, although it did previously offer a through service via Vilnius.

For the period from May 2010 to October 2010, an estimated 19,000 O&D passengers travelled on the route with 43 per cent using the Estonian Air indirect service. The majority of passengers used other airlines, the most notable travel flows being with Finnair via Hlesinki (16 per cent) and Czech Airlines (via Prague (eleven per cent).

Since Estonian Air introduced its link at the end of October, the direct flight secured a 64 per cent share of the traffic between November 2010 and April 2011. An estimated 23,000 passengers flew between the cities during this six month period, but there remained a large level of leakage but this time via Riga with airBaltic (ten per cent)

Schedule:

OV173/KL3003 TLL0640 – 0810AMS EQV D
OV473/KL2830 TLL1805 – 1930AMS CR9 x247
OV174/KL3002 AMS0940 – 1305TLL EQV D
OV474/KL2831 AMS2010 – 2330TLL CR9 x247