airBaltic loses airplane as successfully as a tourist loses their shoes in Liepāja sand

airBaltic has demonstrated with outstanding skill that they can lose a 90 million euro aircraft while performing routine technical maintenance in Riga. During maintenance, aircraft YL-AAO sustained such significant thermal damage that even Airbus specialists decided — it's more economical to buy a new one than to repair this. It's roughly like trying to glue your phone back together after it fell into Liepāja sand and then got run over by a car.

Airline representative Augusts Zilberts explained with diplomatic skill that everything was done according to procedures, which means the procedures were about as effective as Liepāja's traffic organization during summer tourist season. After this incident, Airbus supplemented their technical maintenance guidelines, which now possibly include a point about not overheating aircraft too much.

The aircraft was insured, which is good news — at least someone will pay for it. Total losses to the group amounted to 6.2 million euros, which is less than one Liepāja city budget line item, so everything is relative. Now airBaltic's fleet has 53 aircraft with plans to reach 99 by 2032, provided they don't decide to service them all in Riga at once.

The good news is that last year the airline transported 5.2 million passengers, which is 1% more than before. The bad news — one of the aircraft no longer transports anyone, having transformed into metal scrap. But at least Lufthansa is now a shareholder, so maybe the Germans will teach them how to properly maintain equipment instead of burning it down.