As Maspalomas24H previously reported, Air Baltic's drastic withdrawal threatens the supply of high-spending tourists to southern Gran Canaria. The Latvian airline announced the closure of all its international bases outside Riga, including its operations at Gran Canaria airport. This decision was prompted by accumulated losses of €115 million in 2025, the dismissal of its CEO, Martin Gauss, and persistent technical problems with the Pratt & Whitney GTF engines on its Airbus A220 aircraft.
The company's survival plan requires a financial bailout through a bond issue and capital conversion, which its board will vote on next August 17, forcing it to get rid of a third of its fleet, reducing it to about 36 or 40 operational aircraft.
The closure of the base on the island dismantles the direct air corridor that fueled the flow of travelers from Northern Europe and the Baltic countries to the Maspalomas hotel complexes. The profile of Nordic, Polish, and Belgian tourists who used these connections represented a key asset for reducing the seasonality of tourism in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, characterized by longer stays and a higher average daily expenditure than the British or German average. The loss of this direct connectivity weakens the diversification of source markets that the tourist region needed to reduce its dependence on traditional tour operators.
The impact extends beyond the Latvian brand itself and affects the European aviation sector. The Lufthansa Group, which owns a ten percent stake in the airline and is the main beneficiary of leasing its aircraft under the ACMI model, with up to twenty-one planes flying daily for brands like Brussels Airlines and Swiss, is absorbing some of the operational losses while it reorganizes its network.
However, the elimination of point-to-point routes from Gran Canaria breaks the direct link with Riga and the Baltic enclaves, leaving a gap in the market that local competitors will take months to reorganize in the lead-up to the peak winter season.
