AIR BALTIC Passenger Reviews and Customer Trip Reports

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AIRBALTIC customer review :  17 March 2010 by Tapani Utunen (Finland)

KUO-RIX-AMS-RIX-KUO on B737-300 and 737-500. Joined their FF program to avoid the 5€ check-in fee plus paid for luggage on their webpage in advance to avoid hassle at airports. After doing this, we felt AirBaltic was a perfect choice for us - flights on time, smart crews with good English on all sectors plus pre-booked meals good value. Leg room could be better and at peak hours it's hard to find a seat at Riga airport but otherwise, they are fine. If AirBaltic can keep their prices down, they are an excellent option for everybody in smaller Nordic towns where they take off by 7 am to reach Europe by early afternoon and they get you back home by 11 pm.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  11 February 2010 by Enel Gortfelder (Estonia)

I bought my ticket from a web page (one of those ticket prices with comparisons) and was not asked at any stage for a luggage charge. I flew from Tallinn to Riga, then to Istanbul. No luggage charges asked. On my way back, I was asked to pay 15 Euros for my luggage. The actual cost was 10 euros in fact but just because I didn't buy it when buying the ticket, had to pay 5 Euros more. Not even mentioning inside the flight services and traditional delays.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  8 February 2010 by D Le Quesne (UK)

Apart from charging for an extra kilo of luggage and what a fuss to pay it, the FA's are intent on sleeping at the back of the aircraft on most flights. A sad day when the options to travel to Riga are down to one carrier Air Baltic - and dont they know you have little option. I also flew my partner from Riga to Barcelona Air Baltic in business class, now that is a joke sat in the rear of the aircraft cramped seats the only benefit was a free meal, not a very good one either. The staff are inattentive, surly and at times just rude when you dare to disturb them for any service on board. It is only the fact that they have most of the share of flights in and out of Riga and the Baltics that they are still in business, as most of my fellow travellers only fly them because of no other choice. And no they are certainly not low cost just low on service etc.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  2 February 2010 by Peter Beck (Denmark)

Flight from Vilnius to Copenhagen. I needed my hand in my pocket yet again. 5 Euro checking in fee and luggage consisting of a small bag , 11kg in weight to pay for, even though my E ticket was a return and baggage allowance of 20 kg. I was not the only one to fall into the trap of hidden costs. Air Baltic is not a low price airline so I am really shocked with their performance.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  8 January 2010 by Laszlo Mag (Sweden)

Istanbul from Copenhagen, with connecting flight in Riga. All flights were delayed and the transfer window between the flights was so short that our luggage just didn't make it all the way back to Copenhagen on our way home - it was simply abandoned in Riga. There were ten or so angry travelers from Istanbul who's luggage never made it to Copenhagen. Why didn't they wait for the luggage from the connecting flight to be transfered before they airplane took off? There are still no traces of my bag. Thank you! The service on board was barely okay, and the fact that they even charge you for water is just ridiculous.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  12 December 2009 by Jon Tydeman (UK)

Gatwick to Riga with Air Baltic. Quick check-in at Gatwick, not by Air Baltic staff though. Ridiculously slow and laborious boarding which meant we were late taking off. No free food or drink - when did Air Baltic become a low cost carrier? Staff were slow and not very friendly. The aircraft was jam packed. Why don't they put on extra flights? This was in the low season.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  5 December 2009 by T Vincent (Belgium)

BRU-RIX-ARN. Check in in BRU was awful: only 6 people in front of me but all of them were above the 20 kg luggage rule and had to pay extra, so it took 40 minutes for us to reach the check-in counter. Our flight was delayed (1 hr). The transit in RIX was very short and of course, our luggage didn't followed us. Air Baltic was the cheapest option for us to go Stockholm from Brussels but I think that they are quite expensive compared to low costs. The check-in at Arlanda for the return flight was excellent as they use the SAS desk.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  11 November 2009 by Y Antropova (UK)

LGW-RIX last week. Usually, flying out of Riga with Airbaltic and checking-in online I have a rather pleasant experience. Flying out of LGW, where there is no online check-in and where Servisair handles the check-in, the experience is worse than with low cost carriers. Besides the usual queues, the check-in agent made me spend 15 min going back and forth between her desk and another one to pay for 1 extra kg of luggage and Servisair wanted to charge me GBP5 for paying the GBP12 charge with a credit card. I know the rule of 20kg + 6 kg carry on, but never in my life any other airline ever made a fuss about 1 extra kg and I have flown with many. Air Baltic does not call itself a low-cost carrier and no longer charges low cost to justify poor service, but it is, and a greedy one with all kind of extra charges, very high charges for any changes to the ticket and a mysterious "surcharge" that they add to every ticket, bundled with taxes, but not refundable in case you want to cancel your ticket. I have requested Air Baltic to explain the nature of this surcharge several times, but still failed to receive a satisfactory explanation. I do have to say a good word about the FA crew as I have had only good experience with their attitude even if the salad I ordered onboard was a joke. In summary, I am still sad about the day BA stopped flying to Riga as at least then I could make a choice about service and price. I understand that Air Baltic needs to establish itself in a very competitive industry and grow in a very challenging market - I just wish they did it with more class.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  8 October 2009 by V Neagu (Moldova)

Chisinau-Riga-Dushanbe in Economy Class. Fokker 50 in reasonably good condition on the first flight, followed by Boeing 737-300 on the second leg. What was a big disappointment were the staff, particularly on the Riga-Dushanbe flight. 6 female flight attendants who thought they were the protagonists of a fashion walk and not there to cater to passengers. Outrageous like "I am busy don't you see" and "I only have two hands so wait". The stewardesses were primarily concerned about going to sleep as soon as possible, so the first thing they did was to configure a sleeping area in the back of the plane. I asked one of the flight attendants whether the flight to Dushanbe is always full and one of the FAs said "unfortunately". I asked why unfortunately and she replied: we have to serve a lot of people. Food service took almost 2.5 hours with hot meals depleted by the mid-section of the airplane. Will not fly them again.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  5 October 2009 by Alex Starks (Israel)

Munchen staff excellent, MUC-RIX flight clean and efficient. Riga check-in is a disaster. 5-6 agents crowding around two counters making a discussion group of every issue. Unclear rules of baggage allowance - two agents arguing whether they should count pieces or kilos. Took 40 minutes to check in. Staff unprofessional and rude. Lounge in Riga OK, but they stopped cooperating with any other major FF cards - probably tried to charge too much. Prices of tickets very far away from low-cost. Leg room tight and no service on the plane. Funniest rule is not to distribute pillows before takeoff and collecting them before landing, stating "security".

AIRBALTIC customer review :  15 September 2009 by M Gordon (Sweden)

Nice-Stockholm. Liked the food that we've ordered and they had great tea. I recommend paying the extra for food onboard for longer flights. I dislike that tea wasn't included in the meal but the tea that they served but €2-3 is a fair price. The staff was nice. The airport in Riga is small but very modern which is very nice since the transfer is fast.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  11 September 2009 by Rosanne Skopp (USA)

Tel Aviv to Riga. Customer service is nonexistent on Air Baltic. Our flight was scheduled to depart TLV at 5:15 a.m. but I heard from an acquaintance who had made the same trip exactly one week earlier that the schedule had changed and the flight was now due to leave at 8am. Since there is no one to phone in Israel representing Air Baltic I called Latvia, an expensive call! The 5:15am time was confirmed so we went to the airport arriving before 3am, a horrible time! As soon as we arrived we saw that the flight was not scheduled to leave before 8am. We, and the other 100 plus passengers were stranded in an airport in the middle of the night for no earthly reason as Air Baltic own personnel told us, when we finally were allowed to check in, that the flight time had been changed over a week before. But no one from Air Baltic thought it might be nice to inform the passengers! Ridiculous and insulting. Since then I have been trying to extract an explanation and settlement from Air Baltic. They simply do not care! They do not respond and they just hope I will go away.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  2 September 2009 by A Ringnalda (Netherlands)

AMS-RIX-VNO (and other flights). Staff often do not speak English well and make up ad-hoc rules. Very little leg room; taller passengers will have to cram their knees against the seat in front of them, even if it is not reclined. No service provided on board, although free drinks are provided on short 1 hr flights. Overall, while the onboard experience is that of a low-cost carrier, the prices are not (the prices advertised online are exclusive of 'hidden' costs such as taxes and admin fees). Online check-in or self check-in at the airport are not always available, leading to unavoidable long queues. There is no online system for changes to tickets, so changes in dates etc. have to be communicated manually (taking about 48 hrs). I would not recommend flying this airline if you can avoid it.

AIRBALTIC customer review :  27 August 2009 by Daniel Glesby (Canada)

TLV-RIX-LGW. Got to the check in counter at 02:30 for a 05:00 flight. First you have to stand in line for the bag scanner which checks the bags for explosives that only took about 20 minutes. Then I got to the counter and was the 3rd person in line. My first flight was on a 737-500 (the tightest leg room I have ever encountered) I got seat 6A. On the TLV-RIX flight the flight attendants were non existant and did not see the drink cart go by once on a long 4 hour flight. Things got better on the RIX-LGW flight as it was on a newer and nicely refurbished 757-200. The drinks/food came by once and the flight attendants were friendly enough and efficient.

AIR BALTIC review :  13 July 2009 : by J Teelem

LGW-RIX. One of the worst flight experiences. The food service was terrible. Since they are charging for food, it takes a very long time to serve people, because each credit card transaction takes time and then people have to sign the receipt etc. I was very hungry, but since I was sitting in a back row, I had to wait 2 hrs for the food service to reach my row! And when I finally got a chance to order food, the flight attendant suggested to skip the warm meal, because we were already starting to descend! It's worth mentioning that since the flight attendants were busy serving food during the whole flight, they didn't have any time to assist any other passengers, so they just totally ignored when someone pressed the service button.

AIR BALTIC review :  4 June 2009 : by Michael Kasberg

HAM-RIX-HAM. Clean aircraft, young but friendly cabin crews. Had to pay about 4 Euro for a (double) sandwich, 10 Euro for a full meal with wine & dessert, which is adequate. All flights were on time, baggage needed 30 minutes in RIX. Internet check-in worked good. Nothing special but good value for money.