FlyLAL goes bankrupt, strands Vilnius

2003 flight from Berlin to Vilnius.

This is old news, but it’s still important.

Lithuanian Airlines, which changed its name to “FlyLAL,” (which, when pronounced with a Lithuanian accent, sounded a lot like “El Al“) went bankrupt last month. There had been efforts to try to salvage the company in January, but nothing worked out. Considering how small VNO is, losing an entire airline like this is kind of crippling for people trying to get to Vilnius.

As Bloomberg notes, only 9 EU capitals now fly directly to Vilnius, and a quick glimpse at the Vilnius Airport’s useful map indicates that, all told, only 16 cities in all of Europe fly to Vilnius non-stop. Not on that list of 16?

• London
• Paris
• Brussels
• Berlin
• Amsterdam
• Madrid
• Rome…

The mind reels, in fact. Vilnius is supposed to be a tourism center this summer, but now it’s almost entirely secluded. Only 13 airlines land on its strip, and of those, only Lufthansa and Aer Lingus seem particularly “Western European.”

So for those of us planning summer trips to Vilnius, what on earth are we to do? There seem to be three options:

1. Let a travel agent take care of it. You will probably end up transferring at Warsaw onto a Lot flight, or something, but all the headache will be gone. I haven’t flown this way in forever, but it’s looking tempting.

2. Roll your own connection. I’ve done this with success the last three times I went to Lithuania. My miles are all on American, so I fly to an American Airlines city (collecting or using miles, depending), like London or Barcelona. Then I use the $99 flat rate one-way voucher from europebyair.com to fly to Vilnius. Of course, those vouchers relied on FlyLAL. This won’t work anymore, but I can fly to Dublin or Frankfurt (or Milan), which are served by AA, and then from there get to Vilnius. The current FRA > VNO > FRA flight I’m looking at is about $500, so this is certainly a sub-optimal solution.

Flying airBaltic is a potential solution, but a lot of their flights end up in Rīga, not Vilnius, so you have to account accordingly. I’d hate to have to transfer already in NYC (at JFK, most likely), then again in Western Europe, then again in Rīga. I’m puking a bit just thinking about it.

3. Wait for something new to pop up. Airlines are funny. Who knows, maybe by this summer easyJet will be flying from London to Vilnius for $40.

Still, the point here is that things are more complicated now than they were before, especially if you’re trying to minimalize reseating or trying to use a connection in another city as a tourist opportunity.

Tags: FlyLAL, travel, VEKS