Air Lituanica was a Lithuanian airline headquartered in Vilnius and based at Vilnius Airport. It ceased operations in .
Air Lituanica was registered in late . It was named after Lituanica, an aircraft commanded by Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas, two pioneer Lithuanian pilots that flew it on a transatlantic flight in 1933. The carrier sole owner, Air Vilnius Group, had an initial investment of LTL0.5 million. Air Vilnius Group was in turn owned by à  iaurÃÂs miestelis, which had been registered on as a subsidiary of the Vilnius City Municipality. Plans were to collect LTL43.5 million (EUR14 million) from a number of investors for the establishment of the new airline.
Air Lituanica was established in . The activation of the company was partly accelerated by the fact that Lithuania would take position in the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from to . In - when the airline's air operator's certificate had not yet been granted but it already had 27 employees â Air Lituanica announced Brussels as its first destination, with services to start on .
Air Lituanica launched ticket sales in early using Estonian Air's booking channels. Also in early , the airline signed a contract for the lease through 2015 of an Embraer E-170 from Estonian Air. Air Lituanica received its air operator's certificate on ; and started flight operations four days later, on 30 June 2013, serving the VilniusâÂÂBrussels route with the leased Embraer E-170. Air Lituanica thus became the first Lithuanian scheduled airline to operate since FlyLAL-Lithuanian Airlines and Star1 Airlines ceased operations in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
An 86-seater Embraer E-175 leased from ECC Leasing Company, an Embraer subsidiary, entered Air Lituanica's fleet in ; Embraer handed the aircraft over to Air Lituanica two months later than planned. The carrier started flying its second route, VilniusâÂÂAmsterdamâÂÂVilnius, on 8 July; with its first two routes, the airline contributed 2 percent of the international airline capacity in Lithuania, and , the company ranked in terms of available seats to and from Lithuania. It added Berlin Tegel Airport in Berlin, Prague, and Munich to its route network on 5 August, 20 September and , respectively.
Following allegations of missed payments from both parties, Estonian Air unilaterally terminated its leasing agreement with Air Lituanica for the Embraer E-170 in which forced Air Lituanica to end service to Amsterdam and Berlin, the routes on which it used the E-170. Service to Amsterdam ceased on .
In , Air Lituanica announced that it would begin flights to Gothenburg and Malmö, Sweden, to be served on a seasonal basis between and , and that it would resume flights to Amsterdam.
Air Lituanica ceased flight operations on . It filed for bankruptcy on 8 June 2015.
Air Lituanica served the following destinations:
At the Air Lituanica fleet consisted of a single Embraer 175.