Airport, Estonia, Good for Business, Transport

Aviation companies' tenders are to be submitted by Jan. 24 and the winning bidder will start servicing the routes on June 1, 2019, when the contract ends with the current carrier, Transaviabaltika.

Separate tenders can be submitted for the Tallinn-Kuressaare and the Tallinn-Kardla routes. The cost of the trip accounts for 70%  of the weight of the tender and the age of the main aircraft for 30%.

At the start of November, the Road Administration canceled a procurement for finding an operator for said routes because it included a requirement that environmentally friendly aircraft must be used, which would have prevented the use of turboprop engines, as in the course of the tendering procedure it became evident that certified carbon dioxide emissions data regarding such engines was not available.

"We did not wish to exclude provision of service with turboprop powered aircraft. This would have resulted in an ineffective competition and unequal treatment of bidders. To prevent such a situation, our only option was to cancel the procurement," Andry Palu, head of the department for public procurements at the Estonian Road Administration, said.

The national airline of Estonia operating under the Nordica brand, for instance, requested to use the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop airliners, which are currently servicing the routes from Tallinn to Estonia's large western islands.

A spokesman for Transaviabaltika, Rene Must, told that the requirement regarding carbon dioxide emissions was incomprehensible as it was not rational to expect companies would use jet planes on routes to Kuressaare and Kardla.

The procurement announced in July attracted requests from the state-owned airline Nordica in combination with its subsidiary Regional Jet OU as well as the current carrier, the Lithuanian company Transaviabaltika. In addition, requests were filed by the Estonian commercial carriers AS Airest and NyxAir OU.

The contract with Transaviabaltika runs until May 31, 2019.