Podgorica Airport hopes the upcoming opening of Wizz Air’s base in the Montenegrin capital will help it win back some of the 140,000 Montenegrin nationals who used the fast-growing Tirana Airport in 2025. The head of operator Airports of Montenegro, Roko Tolić, recently said, “We need to be at least as attractive as our competitors. Right now, we’re caught in a kind of squeeze between Dubrovnik and Tirana. We’ll try to change that, while taking into account the company, our capabilities and the public interest”. He added, “What hurts is the number of citizens from Montenegro that travel to Tirana to find their onward connections there. That’s one of the issues I’m expected to solve, and one of the reasons I was appointed as Executive Director of Airports of Montenegro”.
In 2025, almost 140.000 Montenegrin citizens flew to or from Tirana Airport, representing a 14% increase on the previous year. This figure does not include travellers from Montenegro with foreign passports. The most popular destinations with Montenegrin passengers from Tirana were those to Italy and Spain. Commenting on the upcoming Wizz Air base in Podgorica, the General Manager of Tirana Airport, Piervittorio Farabbi, said, “I believe the new capacity in Podgorica will be complementary for the entire region, especially for markets such as Italy, Germany and France, and that we should all be grateful for Wizz Air’s focus on the Western Balkans. In addition, with the new portfolio of destinations in Podgorica and Tirana, we could also see demand diversify, particularly when it comes to tourism options”.
Wizz Air will open a base in Podgorica this March launching fifteen new routes in the process. New destinations include Barcelona, Basel, Beauvais, Baden Baden, Cologne, Hamburg, Rome Fiumicino, Gdansk, Maastricht, Malmo, Poznan, Rzeszow, Ljubljana, Vilnius and Wrocław. Wizz Air will compete directly against flag carrier Air Montenegro on services to Rome and Ljubljana, as well as Ryanair to Gdansk and Wroclaw. The new routes will join the already served Budapest, Dortmund, Memmingen and Milan Malpensa on a year-round basis, as well as Katowice, London Gatwick and Warsaw seasonally. The airline plans to have two Airbus A321neo aircraft based in the city, with a number of routes launching in late March and a second batch in June. Wizz Air handled just over 360.000 passengers on its Podgorica operations in 2025.
I'm surprised by the amount. For comparison, anyone know how many Slovenians use Venice or Zagreb?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2024/02/neighbouring-airports-compete-for.html?m=1
DeleteNo one know this figure exactly, but my guess is, that at least as much people travel via Italy, Croatia, Austria from/to SLO, as there are pax from/to LJU
DeleteSLO in 2025 had apx 7 mio tourist arrivals with 17.9 mio overnights, plus all the locals. My cousin in LJU, they are 7 at home, they travel usually 3-4 times per year, depart in 95% of all cases from Italy. And not just them, I know more people travelling fm SLO not fm LJU AP, than fm LJU Airport. Considering also the buying power and SLO being already 22 years a EU member, I would estimate around 3 to 3.5 mio travel by air annually to/fm SLO
Lots of tourists fm Asia, Americas combine SLO with VCE or Croatia, Austria, BUD/Balaton. Me personally has done so too. Flying to VCE, renting a car and visiting Brda, Kras, Vipava, TRS and Istria
Orgin of most common tourist in Slovenia: 1. Germany 2.Italy 3.Austria 4. Croatia 5.Hungary 6. Czech Republic 7. The Netherlands 8.France 9. Serbia 10. Bosnia. Mostly neighboring/close by countries and people who want to enjoy the Slovenian nature. Mostly car and camper tourism. Slovenia has a lot of tourists but that doesn't mean necessary a lot of demand.
DeleteBetween 500k and 700k
Delete@12.21. you are right, but among that the tourist numbers from the UK and the USA are booming, asian tourists are returning and many other far away markets are growing. Now it depends which airports are gonna be able to attract those better. Is it gonna be LJU or the surrounding ones?
DeleteA good example of this is the arrival of airBaltic. Since 2024, when it started flights to Riga, the amount of tourists from the Baltics jumped by like 30 %. Sure, they are still coming in small numbers, but this shows that we don't just need to capture demand, correct connections can create it.
If Wizz delivers decent fares and frequencies people will come back quickly.
ReplyDeleteTrue dat!
DeletePeople didn’t go to Tirana because they love driving there, they went because Podgorica lacked connections and prices were too high. Fix that and the problem solves itself.
ReplyDeleteTIA probably had 12 million pax last year.
DeleteThat is a huge number for the poorest economy in Europe. FR and W battling out helped them tremendously as well as having a huge diaspora.
And the cheapest seaside access in Mediterranean
DeleteTirana itself is nowadays one of the nicest cities in the Balkans for a mini-break. Its booming. I flew there from London a few weeks ago and two ladies from CG were sitting next to me on the Ryanair flight.
DeleteAlbania is not the poorest country in Europe. It's not even in the poorest 5.
DeleteI liked Tirana too and Albania in general. An indeed beautiful part of Europe
DeleteI thought people loved driving there. Thanks for the clarification.
DeleteAnonymous 09:27 , Albania is not the poorest country in Europe, haha
DeleteWhilst Albania is among the poorest countries in Europe, its airport however is by far one of the best in the Balkans. Personally i would vote it the best in the neighbourhood, both in design and ease of use. But thats just my two cents.
DeleteAlbania is dreadful country. I was there 10 years ago and never again. I drove along the "highway" during the rain and all of a sudden saw sign to turn mandatory left??!? It was not possible, because I was at 130kmph, so I drew straight into pebbles of construction road. Luckily, no serious damage on the car. No warnings 1 km or 800 meters ahead, not even 100 meters, just sign to turn left, as you are in a city center, not on a highway. By the way, along the "highway", there were houses, tractors, bicycles etc.. Not even close to European standard highway.
DeleteOnly very center of Tirana was nice, but literary main square and two streets around. Rest is full of dirt, trash, unfinished buildings and broken asphalt. Like in a Beirut during civil war. Thank you, but no thank you ever again.
Speed limit in Albania is 110 btw. Well done
Delete@16:12 If you think two streets of Tirana are nice only you really havent seen a thing or you're just being silly. There is a lot to see and do and as a short break its excellent.
DeleteThe roads can be dody that is correct but becareful with the label dreadful, it gets used for large parts of ExYu too.
Anonymous 16:12 well my friend at that time when you drove in Albania, the speed limit was 110, not 130, so with that speed you would have had time to change roads and get out of the highway. That's on you, lol.
Delete16:40, 20:07
DeleteSo what, with 110kmph you can turn hard left, without braking??!?? Try that please and let us know how it ended. lol...
At the time only one section of highway to Elbasan was with that speed limit. So you’re either exaggerating or lying.
DeleteAnonymous 22:17 he's doing both
DeleteAnonymous 21:42 there's no way in a highway to be that case what you said because if it was true, it would be a big issue, because highways are national roads, with a high importance. Not like just any road in Albania.
DeletePodgorica will become a proper low-cost airport now. Next step: improve terminal capacity and passenger experience, because it is terrible.
ReplyDelete+1 true. The terminal is one of the less good ones in the region.
DeleteAny update of the privatization/concession process?
DeleteNothing. Incheon won but nothing is happening.
DeleteIt would be amazing if Wizz was allowed to fly to BEG.
ReplyDeleteIt will be, in 4-5 years.
DeleteBravo 🇪🇺
DeleteWhen Montenegro joins EU Wizz will start BEG....
DeleteHmm, both W6 and FR can fly between ZAG and SPU or DBV but they don't.
DeleteTheir aircraft are way too big for intra Croatia routes. Especially W6 who is transitioning fast to an all A321neo fleet with 239 seats.
DeleteStill they fly between Bratislava and Košice
DeleteFor which they're getting heaps of money
Delete@18:39 not a valid comparison. Its heavily backed by the Slovakian state
Delete@18:12
DeleteSurely its stronger demand between ZAG and SPU, than BEG TGD
Nope, BEG-TGD is way ahead of ZAG-SPU
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2025/04/intra-ex-yu-routes-register-strong.html
That's all great, but they're going to have to do something with the airport. In the beginning, at least think about the protocols. Podgoica creates a crowded airport all the time, as it does not allow immediate passage through the security control, but for each flight separately, so it creates constant queues and crowding in the part of the terminal where check-in is, even when it has a completely empty part of the terminal where the gates are.
ReplyDeleteIf Podgorica becomes cheaper and easier, I think even some people from the coast will start using it instead of Dubrovnik.
ReplyDeleteWizz focusing on Western Balkans is true but let’s not pretend it’s charity. They are coming because they smell subsidies, profit and market gaps.
ReplyDeleteMainly subsidies :)
DeleteSubsidies. If a flight with a mickeumouse airlines cost the local government 25 EUR, the base has to subsidise 24 EUR.
DeleteThe pilots with WizzAir earn what where I was earing in Australia in 1995. A programmer. Immigrant from Serbia.
Hope Airports of Montenegro finally fixes basic issues like parking, access roads, and peak-time queues before the summer chaos with Wizz hits.
ReplyDeleteShould be an absolute priority!
Delete@Admin,
ReplyDeleteif 140k Monenegrin passport holders travelled through TIA, what are the numbers for Kosovo and North Macedonia passport holders?
Idk about KS but Macedonians do use TIA alot. I whould be nice too se those numbers
DeleteDo you they mean 140,000 return ticket travelers so total 280,000 pax or 140,000 in total?
ReplyDeleteIt's in total
DeleteI'm still p*ssed off with losing our flight with Pikey Jet from Manchester to Podgorica, I was told the average load factor was 92% but Ryanair spat their dummy out when airport charges were raised and dropped the route and launched Tirana instead from Manchester.
ReplyDeleteProper ball ache getting to and from there.
Ok I got some bargains like 50 quid return (can't be making much profit on that, if any, even with a subsidy) but most flight's I took were around the £150/200 mark, really can't understand why they dropped it.
Whilst large parts of Albania are really very basic, the airport (which is the topic of the article) is, my opinion, far nice than anything in ex-Yu from a passenger perspective. They do design well there, even if supporting infrastructure is often poorly done. But the same in our region too.
ReplyDeleteYour colleague already wrote this. Please coordinate better.
DeleteJust my personal opinion. So please save the rude comment
DeleteOops, someone's mad 😆
DeleteOops. Someones rude
DeleteGood one
Delete