airBaltic to cancel most direct departures from Tallinn

Yaaaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn..... Have to care to criticize.

I've lived here 17 years already - love this country. I'm sorry you are so miserable. I just need to fly out on the date I bought my ticket for, at the same price I bought it. I expect a bit of honesty and customer service.

I think you are confusing the two "not happy" writers. I was the first "not happy", and I totally love it here, respect people, and do not try and get attention for myself as a foreigner. I speak the language and am very polite to everyone around me. The 2nd "not happy" was writing in response to me. He was rude and disrespectful in his response. I wrote back to him again to say I've lived here 17 years and love it here. The three "not happy" posts were not from one and the same person. And I am only "not happy" about having my flight canceled and not rebooked on another flight. Otherwise I am very happy!

I'm not convinced that was their strategy. The backing from the Estonian government just allows Estonian Air to continue to run up losses, and also purchase some new aircraft. However, these aircraft will take a while to show up and have an impact on the schedule -- 2 will arrive next year, and the third in 2012. They'll also get rid of 2 Boeings, so this doesn't have a big affect on their ability to expand routes.

What Air Baltic probably did wrong is expand too quickly in the Estonian market, and on the wrong routes. I've never flown it, but I just can't see that there is a lot of demand for the Tallinn-Oulu route.

On the Stockholm route, their problem was it was one flight a day and quite early in the morning. I don't think it was a code-share with SAS so that makes using Stockholm as a connection not work so well.

Playing armchair airline CEO for a minute, I say Air Baltic should instead look for routes underserved by Estonia which are likely to have high demand. For example, they could run a service RIX-TLL-LGW and back the same way. So it's a direct flight for people in Estonia, and a feeder to/from RIX for Estonian flyers also (like those connecting on another flight).

When AB began its expansion,so many of the expat eksperts were saying how that was the death of EA and BA was doing it right.Where are those monkeys now?Like so many other issues that have come up the eksperts got it wrong AGAIN!

I'd say it's too early to tell, and I don't think EA is going to "win" this battle.

Let's see, so far this year EA has outright lied and said they were getting the new planes, then a few weeks later they say actually that deal was off and they have to do a new one (since they didn't get their financing in place).

Then they get a cash injection from the Estonian government, presumably to operate in the interests of Estonia, yet their new plans are to increase routes from... Vilnius. In fact, one of the 737s will shortly be based in Vilnius and solely operate routes from there.

Then there's that issue of the huge losses EA continues to rack up. Even the CEO has admitted they'll finish this year with a loss, and blamed it on the volcanic clouds of course. (Even though that stalled aviation for just a few days out of the entire year).