British Airways Sees 26,000 Passengers on Tirana-London Flight in 2006

TIRANA, Dec.5 – British Airways (BA) regional manager for Albania and the U.N.-run Kosova, Albion Idrizi, said on Tuesday that BA expects to have transported 26,000 passengers to and from Albania by the end of this year. The company started flying between London and Tirana in March. First there were three weekly direct flights between Tirana and London’s Gatwick airport – on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It launched a fourth direct flight on the same route in late October – on Sundays. This fourth flight is expected to contribute to larger numbers in the winter season up to March 2007, according to Idrizi. The Mother Teresa Airport, Albania’s only passenger airport, handled 691,504 passengers in the first nine months of 2006, compared to 612,148 passengers in the same period last year. Italy’s Alitalia was market leader in the nine-month period with a 20% market share. The airport is located 25 kilometers northwest of Tirana and it is managed by the German-U.S. consortium Tirana Airport Partners (TAP). The consortium was granted a 20-year build-own-operate-transfer concession on the airport under which it would invest 83 million euro ($105.4 million) in its capacity increase. Out of it, over 50 million euro will be invested by the end of next year. The latest information from the airport shows that fourteen air carriers now have flights to and from Tirana on 25 international destinations, compared to 15 air carriers and 28 destinations in the summer. The latest arrival is the Italian low-cost air carrier Myair started flying to Tirana in mid-November.