Busy times for Croatia Airlines
Croatia Airlines saw its busiest July since the airline commenced operations 21 years ago. The Croatian carrier welcomed 236.890 passengers on board, up 4% or 9.100 passengers on the same month last year. A 24 hour record was set on July 23 when 8.161 boarded a Croatia Airlines flight. The average cabin load factor stood at 75.6%, up 2% on last year. During the month the airline welcomed its millionth passenger of the year, two days ahead of 2011.The good results will kick start what has been a sluggish year for the carrier, passenger wise, as a bigger surge was expected in the first half of the year. Even better news for the airline’s management will be that it has reduced its net loss by 16% in the first half of 2012. It remains to be seen whether Croatia Airlines’ new CEO, Krešimir Kučko, will manage to maintain cost cutting measures while keeping passenger numbers on the up.
In the first seven months of the year, Croatia Airlines has welcomed 1.087.699 passengers, an increase of 2% compared to 2011. As a result, the airline has surpassed last year’s record figures. The average cabin load factor so far this year has stood at 66.4%, which is 1% better than 2011. A total of 83.7% of Croatia Airlines flights managed to depart on time (15 minute delay or less). The Croatian national carrier should not be fazed by any of its counterparts in the EX-YU region as it has already secured the title of being the busiest carrier in 2012.
Croatia Airlines currently operates double daily flights to Zurich, I wonder if SkyWork's flight from Bern will have an impact on them?
ReplyDeleteFor SkyWork it was more difficult to enter the BEG market because BEG-ZRH was already competitive with LX's double daily flights and JU's ten weekly. But in ZAG there is considerably less competition...
Honestly, there's enough demand for all these flights, especially in summer. I'm pretty sure that in addition to charters, plenty of Swiss fly to the coast through ZAG. As you said, they were successful in BEG where competition was as strong as ZAG.
DeleteIf you ask me and my Croatian friends, BSL and GVA will work well for both ZAG and BEG, too. Just look at the capacity between Istanbul airports and Switzerland, 10+ flights per day, and diaspora is as large as Ex-YU (ok, there are some transit pax and Swiss business people, but I'm sure numbers of Turks vacationing in Switzerland is not very high). All in all, there is space for more flights between west Switzerland and ex-yu - I'd bet on wizzair BSL-BEG after they get good load factors on BSL-SKP route...
Well their success in Belgrade was even more impressive because there were three to four daily flights from Belgrade to Zurich.
DeleteThe main difference here is that not only will SkyWork fly to Zagreb but they will keep on flying seasonally to both Rijeka and Split. The addition of these two cities should have an impact on loads from ZRH to ZAG simply because of the option to have a direct flight.
SkyWork is an airline that will be interesting to follow in the future. They seem to have a good business model which will enable them to survive. They are also offering connecting flights through their network by creating waves of departures.
I think this is one advantage Jat Airways and Serbia have and that is that aviation is centralized around BEG.
For Croatia Airlines it will be a greater challenge to fight for the passengers heading to the coast because of so many various airport.
Geneva-BEG could work well with Wizz Air
ReplyDeletebecause in Eastern France live a lot of Serbian Diaspora...especially Lyons-Grenoble and Besancon.
Some said to me they not visited their homeland since ten years!
Unfortunately i dont see that anytime happen as
Wizz Air obviously lost interst in BEG.
Easyjet also flies from Basel and Geneve to SPU and DBV(seasonaly), with excellent LF.
ReplyDelete