Air Croatia anticipates Christmas launch

Air Croatia to launch Zagreb flights

Start-up Air Croatia will make a second attempt at launching services this year, with flights planned to begin during the Christmas holidays. In a statement to EX-YU Aviation News, Air Croatia says it intends to launch flights from Zagreb to Rome Fiumicino Airport, Milan Malpensa, Prague and Dusseldorf “starting from Christmas”. Services to Bucharest, Helsinki, Stockholm and Belgrade “are aimed to start during Easter 2015”, it added. Notably, Air Croatia aims to link Zagreb with unserved markets which hold great potential, while at the same time avoiding direct competition with its rivals.

Air Croatia originally planed to launch flights from Gothenburg to Zagreb, Zadar and Split this June with a wet leased ČSA Czech Airlines Airbus A319. At the time, the start-up told EX-YU Aviation News, “Those flights have been postponed since May due to a low amount of bookings and some technical problems connecting our booking system and flights to many of the major search engines, which made it too risky and difficult to sell only through our website”. Air Croatia also hoped to set up flights from Zagreb to Tel Aviv from June through to September, as well as services from Southern Italy to Dubrovnik in cooperation with Italian tour operators. However, all of these have been put on hold.

Most of the newly announced services, which Air Croatia aims to launch at Christmas time, were served from Zagreb at one point or another. The Italian national carrier Alitalia operated up to two daily flights to Zagreb prior to its financial problems in late 2008. Since, there have been no direct flights between Zagreb and Italy with Croatia Airlines maintaining services to Rome via Dubrovnik and Split. Furthermore, ČSA suspended flights from Prague to Zagreb in 2012 after relegating the route to its regional partner Central Connect Airlines (CCA). Shortly after, CCA declared bankruptcy and ceased all operations. There have been no direct flights between the Croatian and Czech capitals since. Despite a substantial number of flights between Zagreb and Germany, there is no direct link between the Croatian capital and Dusseldorf. According to Air Croatia's website, the start-up will reveal more information on its future destination network next Monday.

Comments

  1. Ha,ha,ha that is good joke...

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    1. Seems to me that both Air Croatia and Dalmatian are just testing market for something new and big, and I would say it's far away form being the joke, although it might look like one at the moment :)

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  2. Was this the airline that ripped all those passengers off a few months ago?

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    1. Yes, this aircompany is not serious..

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    2. No that was Damlatian that ripped of people.

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    3. Dalmatian DID NOT rip off people. 3-4 days after the ticket sales was stopped, ALL (potential) passengers GOT FULL REFUND through their credit cards. But if you feel better when telling or writing lies, just go on, maybe it'll help

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  3. Plane is Fokker F100, price of ticket will be 50 to 140 EUR per leg.

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    1. I think F100 is a good choice, do you know where it came from?

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    2. I have a feeling its Montenegro Airlines

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    3. Da nije mozda OS posto su skoro dva F70 prodali za Ailusralju :)
      INN-NS

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    4. Australiju
      INN-NS

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    6. with those prices, P2P, even for scandinavia, completely uncompetitive

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    7. I don't believe Air Croatia is for real, its a con job being pulled by some conman trying to pull conjob, Croatian aviation authorities don't even have an company registered on their books as Air Croatia.

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  4. well, even if they start ZAG-BEG as they have on their website it won't be viable without cooperation with JU/OU. who'll fly BEG-ZAG? it's only 4 hrs drive

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    1. I guess we will know more next Monday. I hope they reach out to Air Serbia. They could make the best use of their Balkan and Middle Eastern network.

      Wonder if OU will try to sabotage this airline.

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    2. OU will DEFINITELY sabotage the attempt, as they DID every single time since they were founded : Anic Airways, Ivan Air, Air Croatia (back in 1995-1998), Dalmatian, both Air Adriatic and Dubrovnik Airlines, just couple of mnths after announcing scheduled routes from Zagreb, and so on, and so on. But actually, it's not OU, it's LH, as 250.000 passengers per year just between ZAG and the USA, plus all other european and other passengers are all but insignificant

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    3. Why I are you so surprised if OU does everything it can to prevent this from starting. If I owned OU I would do exactly the same and you would too. It's just a business...

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    4. I'm not surprised, I'm disappointed, and it has nothing to do with normal market or business way of operation or state of mind, on the contrary, it's all about fully balkanian corruptive actions and party or state political protectionism which are against today's widely accepted models of work and life

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    5. SM,

      It would be an ok practice if OU was a normal carrier which did its best to be a leader in the region.

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    6. I understand your sentiment but again if i was Croatian, I would much rather see them fighting any way they know rather than just do nothing. I think we here sometimes have double standards. When Delta lobbies FAA or whoever not to let JU code share with EY than that's OK but if OU lobies government (who is their owner) than it's sabotage. If they were doing something illegal than I would have a problem with it, otherwise it's all fair game.

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  5. second part of the CAPA Analysis of Croatia Airways:

    http://centreforaviation.com/analysis/croatia-airlines-part-2-privatisation-will-require-finding-bidders-with-a-strategic-motive-190480

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  6. There is no flight to Athens today, is it a one off or has Air Serbia started to reduce its flights there?

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  7. Finnair announces its second destination in Croatia for the next summer season. In addition to Dubrovnik the airline will also launch Split flights to be operated two times per week onboard the airline's A320.

    Flights will be operated between 05.05.2015 and 03.10.2015.

    Tuesday
    16.25-18.25
    19.10-23.05

    Saturday
    09.10-11.10
    11.50-15.45

    They will compete with Norwegian Air Shuttle and Blue 1 on this route. Flights are timed to offer connections beyond Helsinki, primarily to Asia.

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    1. Shame that Finnair has skipped Zagreb once again in its summer season.

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    2. pity about finnair and Zagreb, there's a market for 3 weekly flights, I wonder why didn't they do it already.

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  8. I am afraid that some of the lines won't succeed since the whole concept relies on O&D passengers. Namely Bucharest, Helsinki and maybe Prague. Those lines maybe won't make profit.

    The idea of launching underserved markets is something I really like, but you need to have at least minimum transferring options for such destinations. So either you codeshare with some company (like Air Serbia, which I really hope to) or make some transferring options yourself. For the second option, you need connections to places like Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, etc, not just Rome and Dusseldorf.

    Good luck to them.

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    1. And when speaking about underserved markets, they could launch Moscow..

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    2. Just before the crisis, there were around 40 passengers per day travelling between Zagreb and Bucharest. It seems that there is some sort of a market they could rely upon.

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  9. How could you believe a company with such a logo...

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    2. I will believe it when I see it. Too many times we have heard announcements, people getting their hopes up and even making plans ,only to be disappointed. Sorry as a Croatian, I will only believe it when I see it.

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    3. Logo has to be more inviting. Not into this coat of arms stuff. I feel that is way out of date.

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  10. http://www.jutarnji.hr/drzava-ponovno-nudi-croatia-airlines-hoce-li-itko-biti-zainteresiran-za-posrnulu-tvrtku-/1225912/

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  11. Farsa se nastavlja, ali je to već praksa na Balkanu. Možda se posreći, nikad se ne zna.

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