AirBaltic Grounds Entire Fleet, Turns Riga Airport Into Open-Air Bankruptcy Museum
The airline has parked every plane on the runway and is charging admission to watch them rust, after declaring Chapter 11 in New York.
AirBaltic has parked its entire fleet nose-to-tail along Riga airport's main runway and opened the tarmac as a paid-admission bankruptcy museum, following its Chapter 11 filing in New York. The first tour group walked between the wings at dawn.
«We are not liquidating, we are curating,» said a carrier spokesman, standing beside a decommissioned turboprop now roped off as Exhibit A. «Visitors may touch the landing gear of the aircraft that once flew to Palanga.»
The airline has retrained its pilots as museum docents and its cabin crew as ticket sellers. A permanent queue now forms at the old check-in desks, where passengers wait up to nine hours to buy a souvenir boarding pass that cannot be used on any flight, because there are no flights.
Riga city council has rerouted three bus lines to the new attraction and installed benches facing the parked jets. Local hotels report full occupancy from aviation enthusiasts who arrive, photograph the grounded fleet, and leave without ever entering the terminal.
By next week, the carrier plans to charge extra for a guided walk through the business-class cabin of a plane that has not moved since the filing. «It is the only route we can still guarantee,» the spokesman said.
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