Golden Air takes off from Maribor

Maribor gets London and Vienna flights
The newly established airline Golden Air, based at Maribor’s Edvard Rusjan Airport, inaugurated services last week from its hub to London Stansted Airport, with little success so far. Behind the new airline is a British businessman of Indian descent, Harjinder Singh Sidhu, as well as the Slovenian company Avio Fun. The first week of service saw only three passengers with the airline, which originally planned to operate a Boeing 737-300 on the route, using a Cessna 510 Citation instead. The service operates via Vienna. Although a return ticket from Maribor to London will set passengers back only 150 Euros, the airline has seen little advertising or publicity. Questions are being raised whether the route will survive for long.

Urban Simčič from Golden Air says the carrier will not throw in the towel and will continue to operate the three weekly service. He adds that it will take up to six months for the airline to reach a 70% cabin load factor which is needed for the Golden Air flights to make a profit. “We want to take advantage of Slovenia’s great tourism potential. The next six months will be crucial for us as we need to make a profit”, Simčič said.

Singh Sidhu from India, one of the key investors in the Golden Air project, purchased Air Slovakia in 2006. Four years later the airline ceased operations. If Golden Air’s flights to London and Vienna prove successful, the newly formed airline plans to expand next year with flights to Birmingham, Bergamo in Italy and Amritsar in northern India. There is hope that the new airline will revive Maribor Airport which hasn’t seen scheduled flights taking off for the past three years.

Comments

  1. JU520 BEGLAX09:51

    why JP had to beat JU last night grrrrrrrrrrr??

    Golden Air will fly not even 12 months.... who wants to start bets?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous09:55

    its not economical... klagenfurt is very close to maribor and there is non stop flight to stansted, and from maribor to vienna it needs 3 hours by car... very bad move...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:22

    MBX - (VIE) - LON

    1.) organize online purchasing with online check-in
    2.) do not announce the flights 1 week before! announce them for summer timetable to all agencies, corporates!
    3.) sell advantages of MBX airport - location, free parking, not crowded, prices, etc!
    4.) informations has to be involved in all marketing actions of Slovenian Chamber of Commerce, Slovenian Tourist Board with branch offices abroad, Croatian Tourist Board and Croatian corporate and leisure agentures
    5.) Maribor tourism and Golden air could promote through booking systems lowbudget packages, on each flight 2 or 4 seats, hotel 3*, 48 bus ticket - touristic card, entrances in spas in and arround Maribor for let say 199,00 EUR! this could be great promotion for the whole region. Lisabon is doing that so and I am a gr8 fan of that gr8 city!
    6.) flights could be organized for mayors of the communities to be aware of exsistance of this flight line and that is not necessary to drive to GRZ,KLU,ZAG or LJU!
    7.) Longstayers - passangers that are flying back later as 7 days they still have security parking... etc.. for free if they decide for MBX.
    8.) BGY is gr8 idea, just start to sell june 2012 now!!!! even OPO would be interesting for leisure segment!
    9.) JP is not bad airline just they announce also flights just few weeks before and I think that is the major problem why they dont have loaded aircrafts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Purger11:48

    Graz, Ljubljana and Zagreb are much closer to Ljubljana than Klagenfurt (all under one hour driving by highway) and they all have direct flights to London. By stopover in Vienna you make this flight 2 hours longer, so to spend one hour to LJU, GRZ or ZAG is even faster.

    Maribor-Vienna is just some 2 hours driving (250 km), who will use this line?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Riječanin12:42

    A message to Purger...
    Do you think Croatia Airlines could reach a passenger high
    of 1.850.000 - 1.900.000 this year?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous15:35

    R I P

    Golden Air

    October 2011 -
    March 2012

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous17:04

    it is a pity that always MBX suffers because of managers with no knowledge how to run airliners industry..... a pity....

    second option is that suburban rail from graz passes graz airport direct to maribor train station! MBX RIP!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Am I God ?17:16

    They need six month to see if this route is profitable ?!

    I only need six seconds...
    can it be that I am God ?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous17:35

    Germanwings flight from
    Cologne to Belgrade had to
    make an emergency stop in Zagreb
    today.
    Reason was an agressive passenger arguing with other passengers and cabin crew !
    The woman (a Miss Torchetto)is
    a TV celebrity in Germany.
    It is possible that she was drunk .
    If the airline sues her,
    she could pay 20.000 Euro or more !

    ReplyDelete
  10. 1.
    An airline with the word "Golden" as part of its corporate identity is a tell-tail sign of something doomed to failure sooner rather than later. Golden Air is no exception.

    2.
    However, if I could find people dumb enough to fly me from Maribor to London on a VLJ class business jet for 75 Euros one-way, I would probably do it just for the experience. It won't be around for much longer though, I suspect.

    3.
    VIE has some of the most expensive landing fees in Europe. I am very curious to find out precisely how much are the landing fees at VIE and STN alone. It won't be far from 75 Euros. Flying MBX-BQH direct on a VLJ class business jet might have been a different prospect, perhaps.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous20:28

    I think ryanair did a gr8 job! loadfactor was not so bad, but they do have the right sell & marketing strategy! MBX is still having potential for LON, MXP and seasonal MOW, OPO, PRN and some of the croatian islands and DuBrovnik :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Not God , only clever !21:01

    To "god" :
    There are so many who need only 6 seconds...hehe !
    But there can be only one god ! ; )
    This Goldair is crazy.
    From Maribor to London via Wien ?
    I have an idea !
    Maribor-Banjaluka-Amritsar-London !
    With Cessna or Airbus380 !
    If this Indian knows that Maribor is in Slovenia and not Slovakia ?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous07:43

    sarcasm is not good at all! lets try to publish ideas how to start up something on MBX that will work.
    thank you all who are interested on that region. So, where are the ideas....

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous09:32

    Ok, I will not be sarcastic, I think the idea is good, but realisation of it disaster, and as many on here think, via Vienna is absolutely not necessary. MBX-STN could work, but marketing is really important. For example, after more than a year Adria flying to/from BNX,most of the people in Banja Luka and region still DON'T know there flights form that airport, I am not even going to start about Zurich flight. People are simply not informed and presented about its benefits. The same is with MBX.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous12:19

    In this days they should do marketing activities 1 year before starting with online purchasing of the tickets!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous15:37

    interesting that the flights do not show up at Vienna Airport. Also not in reservation systems like Amadeus.

    How can they sell anything? For the next 3 days (14-16OCT) flights are shown on their website.
    Are the using Cessna Citation Business Jets of AvioFun for this route now?
    They also show Embraer E135 on their fleets page. Any idea where this might come from? Possibly BMI Reagional doing the roundtrips for them?

    Greetings from Vienna

    ReplyDelete
  17. VisitBengaluru!16:45

    Let airlines make a commercial which sounds like a Turbofolk clip !
    Seka Aleksic or Fazlija flying
    between LJU and BEG singing some
    catchy tune in company of ADRIAS sexy flight attendants !

    You would immediately get attention of so much people !
    If you like this music or not ,this music is extremely popular not only in Ex YU but also in Diaspora .
    This would be the perfect opportunity to reach as much people as possible .
    The perfect advertisement !

    No,this is not intended as a joke ,
    I mean this serious !
    If you want to achieve something you have to go uncommon paths !

    ReplyDelete
  18. AntiTurbofolk21:32

    To Visibengulu :
    No ,this music is shit...people who listen to this music are criminals or
    low class people with little brains or Gypsies !
    Which airline wants such people in their planes ?
    People should listen to quality
    music ,like that in USA or Western Europe !
    Music from Balcans is low class and should get prohibited!
    You are an Idiot...

    ReplyDelete
  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Can somebody please give the bankrupt car seat cover company 675,000 euros for this Maribor Airport. As Mr Simčič points out, things have to make a profit. Can I just make two points. Firstly, I come from Essex and I can assure you it would be very hard for people in Stansted to understand Golden Air spletno stran, ki je v celoti v slovenskem jeziku. Secondly, look at this wine http://www.bolha.com/rdece-vino/vino-cvicek-oglas1276963790 it's listed at 1 cent a litre but the price, actually, is of course po dogovoru.

    ReplyDelete

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