August 2025. We’re travelling to the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and more specifically their respective capitals Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. Are they interconnected by rail? Yes, but not in the most straightforward or userfriendly way possible. The Rail Baltica project should remedy this. Unsurprisingly though, this megaproject faces political and budgetary hurdles. It will most likely not be ready by 2030. But that doesn’t stop us. What to expect from the Baltics? Is it affected by overtourism?
We would start our Baltic adventure in Tallinn, Estonia. Flying over there isn’t quite as easy as to other European destinations as there are much less flights to Tallinn, especially from our home in Belgium.
Late 2024 the Lithuanian airline Nordica declared bankruptcy and seized operations. As this was about the time we were planning our Baltic trip we found flight prices went through the roof to the Baltics, with return fares of €400-€500 in Economy Class. Around the same time, due to the termination of the Brussels Airlines co-branded American Express credit card our miles and more miles would start to expire, so we decided to use some of our miles for this trip, both saving the miles from expiring and avoiding those sky-high cash fares.
We settled on an itinerary with Brussels Airlines from Brussels to Munich connecting onto Lufthansa for our onward flight to Tallinn with a short 1 hour connection. We would return on the direct flight from Vilnius to Brussels operated by Air Baltic for Brussels Airlines. All this in Business class, as when we burn miles we prefer to do it properly.
When the travel day come it was fairly standard. A train ride from Antwerp to Brussels Airport. Travelling without checked bags and having checked in online we continued straight through security and enjoyed some time in the Brussels Airlines The Loft Lounge. This is when I noticed our flight would most likely be delayed as the plane assigned to operate our flight was delayed about 30 minutes upon leaving Nice on its previous flight.
After receiving a notification from Brussels Airlines that our flight would indeed be delayed, Timothy suggested we go speak to the lounge staff, the staff there very courteously helped us but couldn’t rebook us on another flight and told us we would be rebooked in Munich.
We did have hope that we might still be able to make the flight if we ran if the delay didn’t get much bigger.
At this point it was not in our hands and we would have to hope for the best.
Flight SN2645
From Brussels (BRU) 12:45 (13:51) to Munich (MUC) 14:05 (14:44)
Flight Time 54 minutes
Airbus A319-100 OO-SSX
Delivered to Frontier Airlines in July 2004, flying for Brussels Airlines since September 2016
With a slight delay boarding started and it finished rather swiftly. The flight was operated by a standard, slightly older A319. It sported the standard dark blue upholstered Recaro slim line seats with the old small overhead bins. Flying in Business meant we had an open middle seat in a row of 3, and sufficient overhead space to stow our bags. Contrary to most airlines there was no proper dividing curtain between Economy and Business, just a small placard.
During the flight we were served a snack consisting of a Quiche with chickpea and mushroom served with some Grilled aubergine and tomato with an herby tomato sauce.
As a dessert there was Cheesecake passionfruit and mocca mousse
To drink I asked for a gin tonic and was handed a glass with ice and a full can of Tonic and miniature gin “for the long wait due to the delay”.
The flight was fairly short at 1 hour and thus we had barely time to leisurely snack and finish our drink.
After arriving in Munich we were first off the plane and Timothy shot off into the terminal as if he was launched as a rocket by NASA. Alas it wasn’t meant to be, when we reached the gate it just closed. We were told to go to the Lufthansa Service Centre for a rebooking. There the staff quickly rebooked us on the late Air Baltic flight directly to Tallinn from Munich, they did look into connecting flights to get us there earlier, but nothing was available. This did mean a wait of 4 hours in Munich, so we had some time to sample the Lufthansa Business Lounges.