AS Estonian Air is the flag carrier airline of Estonia, and is based in Tallinn. It is a regional airline feeding into the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) network via Stockholm, Oslo, Trondheim and Copenhagen from Estonia.

AS Estonian Air has two subsidiaries and two joint ventures: Estonian Air Jet Leasing Ltd which owns the airline's aircraft and in co-operation with the parent company AS Estonian Air Regional operates Saab 340 aircraft and provides commercial air services to the neighboring region; Estonian Aviation Fuelling Services AS provides aircraft fueling services at Tallinn Airport and AS Amadeus Eesti provides distribution system and support to local travel agents.

Estonian Air is owned by the Estonian government (97.34%) and SAS Group (2.66%). It has 372 employees (March 2012, including AS Estonian Air Regional). Unlike its affiliated carrier, Scandinavian Airlines, Estonian Air is not a member of the Star Alliance but it is a part of the SAS loyalty programme, EuroBonus.

The airline was established by the Estonian government with aircraft acquired from the defunct local Aeroflot Division Estonian Air started operation on 1 December 1991 with service to Frankfurt.^{[citation needed]}

Gatwick Airport (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK) is located 3.1 mi (5.0 km) north of the centre of Crawley,West Sussex, and 29.5 mi (47.5 km) south of Central London. Also known as London Gatwick, it is London's second largest international airport and second busiest by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom after Heathrow. Furthermore, Gatwick is Europe's leading airport for point-to-point flights and has the world's busiest single-use runway averaging 52 aircraft movements an hour. Its two terminals – North and South – cover an area of 810,000 sq ft (75,000 m²) and 1,300,000 sq ft (120,000 m²) respectively.

In 2011, over 33.6 million passengers passed through Gatwick.

Charter airlines generally prefer Gatwick over Heathrow as a base for London and the South East of England. From 1978 to 2008, many flights to and from the United States used Gatwick because of restrictions on the use of Heathrow implemented in the Bermuda II agreement between the UK and the US.. Under the agreement Heathrow allowed the right for only two US carrier and two UK carrier to serve flights to the United States. Currently, US Airways is the only US carrier that still serves Gatwick from the US. The airport is a base for scheduled operators Aer Lingus, British Airways (BA), EasyJet, Flybe, Monarch Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, as well as charter airlines including Thomas Cook Airlines and Thomson Airways. Gatwick is unique amongst London's airports in having a significant airline presence representing each of the three main airline business models: full service, low/no frills and charter. As of January 2011, these respectively accounted for 37, 51 and 12% of total passenger traffic.

Lennart Georg Meri (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈlennɑr̺t ˈɡ̥eorɡ̥ ˈmer̺i]) (29 March 1929 – 14 March 2006) was a writer, film director and statesman who served as the second President of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Meri was a leader of the Estonian independence movement.

Lennart Meri was born in Tallinn, a son of the Estonian diplomat and later Shakespeare translator Georg Meri, and Estonian Swedish mother Alice-Brigitta Engmann. With his family, Lennart left Estonia at an early age and studied abroad, in nine different schools and in four different languages. His warmest memories were from his school years in Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. In addition to his native Estonian, Lennart Meri fluently spoke five other languages: Finnish, French, German, English and Russian.

However, the family was in Tallinn when Estonia was occupied by the armed forces of the Soviet Union in June 1940. The extended Meri family was split in the middle between those supporting the Soviet Union and the Allies of WWII and those opposing the Soviets. Lennart's cousin Arnold Meri joined the Red Army and was soon made a Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1941, the Meri family was deported to Siberia along with thousands of other Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians sharing the same fate. Heads of the family were separated from their families and shut into concentration camps where few survived. At the age of twelve, Lennart Meri worked as a lumberman in Siberia. He also worked as a potato peeler and a rafter to support his family.