26 April (BNS)

The Tallinn-Liverpool flights of the British budget airline Easyjet may bring about 13 000 tourists annually to Estonia, a board member of Tallinna Lennujaam, the state-owned operator of the Tallinn airport, says.

Easyjet plans to attract 35 000 passengers annually, the board member, Erik Sakkov, told BNS on Tuesday at the launch of the new route. Around half passengers will be flying to Liverpool and the other half to Tallinn, and 70% of them will be incoming tourists, he said.

The airline will be making three flights weekly, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. The flight takes three hours. Planes will depart from Liverpool in the morning and return in the afternoon.

The airline said prices of one-way tickets inclusive of airport charges start at 19.99 euros.

At present Easyjet also flies from Tallinn to London. Sakkov said the Tallinn airport "very much hopes" that the airline will resume flights to Berlin and open a route from Tallinn to Paris as well.

As to passenger flows of the Tallinn airport, Sakkov said that as of the end of last week the number of passengers showed 34.5% growth since the beginning of the year. Last week the airport served 34 119 passengers, 30 139 on regular and 3 828 on charter flights, which is twice as many as during the same period last year.