Lufthansa Group & airBaltic Wet Lease Partnership Extended

I really hope that the plans to open more hubs will become a reality. AirBaltic is among my top 3 airlines in terms of customer experience and it would be nice to have them as an option on more routes. Sadly the cooperation with LHG makes me a bit sceptical.

> meaning that airBaltic passengers and crew operate flights on behalf of Lufthansa Group airlines

Call me anxious, but I would avoid flying planes operated by airBaltic passengers... 😉

Exciting collaboration! Lufthansa leveraging airBaltic’s A220s is a brilliant way to meet demand without massive investments. It’s a win-win for both airlines.

I’ve flown several LH/LX flights operated by Air Baltic this year and I didnt like the customer experience and will avoid them in the future.
A220 are amazing planes though.

@ Gerwanese -- Hah, whoops. Fixed, thanks!

I flew Air Baltic in business twice in the last few weeks. These were their own flights.

Great service. Some of their FAs are ex-Emirates.

Better than average food with an awesome pre-order program. All flights in business have food. Anything over 1 hour is a three-course hot meal. Shorter flights have a cold meal, even a quick Riga to Helsinki or Stockholm flight.

Better than average wine list with real champagne. Economy passengers can pre-order wine and a business-class meal.

They have blankets and pillows in business.

Now, the bad:

No lounges, not even at Riga their hub. The contracted lounge there is pretty bad. All the ground staff at out-stations are contracted.

No power or USB outlets. I also don’t think they have WiFi. I couldn’t find a signal.

If you don’t pre-order a meal in business, they only have one meal catered.

Schedule is limited. Lots of flights but generally only morning and evening. Trying to fly Air Baltic at mid-afternoon isn’t easy at least the routes I looked at. I had about a 7-hour layover between my Air France flight landing in CDG and my Air Baltic connecting flight. On the return, I had to overnight in a hotel at Frankfurt before flying Delta. This despite a partnership with Delta. The flight schedule isn’t really aligned for transatlantic flights.

I regularly fly LX operated by Baltic and never had a bad experience. I love the A220s with the single seat business class on the left side. Honestly I don't notice much difference between Swiss and Baltic flights and tend to prefer Baltic due to the plane.

I flew Swiss from Zurich to CDG last year when Delta canceled my flight out of Zurich and Delta re-booked me on Swiss to CDG and then Air France from CDG. I really enjoyed my Swiss flight. But the lounge at Zurich was pretty weak, I thought, for business class. It was slightly better than KLM but not as nice as Air France. The wine selection was awful. At least the meal on the Zurich-Paris flight was good and they even served real champagne, not prosecco or some Swiss sparkling wine.

I could talk about how airBaltic’s all-A220 fleet is perfectly suited for Europe but not much of the rest of the world, but the pedant in me wants to make a small but niggling point…

There are some airlines whose names necessarily begin with lowercase letters, like airBaltic and easyJet. (Not JetBlue, though, despite what its logo apparently shows.) There are some more airlines whose names must not be written with a single uppercase letter, especially the three from the Gulf: flydubai, flyadeal and flynas.

Given that Ben writes airBaltic correctly, it baffles me why he writes EasyJet with an uppercase E and, worst of all, FlyDubai with an uppercase F and D. (That’s not even taking into account the alliance with the big blue circle as its logo — that may be written in several ways, but I prefer Oneworld with a capital O, unlike many others who prefer it lowercase.)

End of pedant rant.

AirBaltic flies the 220 to Dubai and back. That's a LONG flight without power outlets, USB, etc.

@FNT - There are USB ports of course.

BT will fly to charter destinations in southern Europe from the nordics during winter season

There weren't any USB ports on the two A220s that I flew with Air Baltic. I flew within the last month.