RIGA, April 20 (Xinhua) -- After the novel coronavirus crisis struck in March and a nationwide state of emergency was declared in Latvia, the traffic of air passengers at the Riga International Airport, the largest in the Baltic states, fell by 55.7 percent against the same period a year ago, the national statistics office informed Monday.
In January 2020, the Riga airport received 525,000 arriving and departing passengers, but the numbers have been dropping to 490,000 people in February and 236,000 in March. In March 2019, the Riga Airport received 532,300 passengers.
Compared to the same period in 2019, passenger traffic at the airport declined by 12.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, statistics showed.
Although in other countries the global spread of COVID-19 sent air passenger numbers dropping already in February, Latvia's air industry was hit by the pandemic in March, especially after a ban on international passenger services came into effect on March 17, grounding virtually all commercial flights.
Since then, the airport has only been handling special passenger and cargo flights, with the Transport Ministry's authorization to bring home Baltic states' citizens and deliver medical products. Enditem
