Croatia Airlines will suspend services between Zagreb and Pristina at the end of the summer season, despite the carrier's plans to establish a base in the city in 2017. The airline will operate its last service from the Croatian capital on Friday, October 28, and from Pristina the following morning. Ticket sales have been suspended past this date. The carrier has been reducing its frequencies on the route for several years now. This summer, it maintains just two weekly services between the two cities, down from its daily peak several years ago. In 2015, Croatia Airlines handled some 10.000 passengers on the route, well down from the 19.000 it carried in 2009, which marked its best performing year in Pristina. The carrier has previously said it plans to open bases in Sarajevo, Tirana, Pristina and Skopje in 2017 and offer direct flights to several destinations in Europe.
Apart from Croatia Airlines, SAS Scandinavian Airlines will also pull out of Pristina this winter. The airline will terminate its flights from Copenhagen as of October 29. Last winter the carrier discontinued flights from both Stockholm and Oslo to Kosovo. Although SAS has no direct competition on the route, it faces increased pressure from Wizz Air's recently launched service from Skopje to the Danish capital. An increasing number of travellers from Kosovo are using Skopje Airport due to its generally cheaper air fares. In addition, Eurowings will suspend its flights from Berlin Tegel Airport to Pristina at the end of the summer season. The airline has seen strong competition on the route after easyJet launched services from Berlin Schonefeld this March. It will continue to maintain flights from Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover and Stuttgart to Pristina this winter.
During the year, Pristina Airport has seen the introduction of a number of new routes, including Adria Airways' two weekly seasonal service to London Gatwick, as well as Air Berlin's new flights from both Hamburg and Stuttgart. Furthermore, easyJet introduced flights from Berlin, which will be followed by the launch of services from Paris on October 1. Earlier this year, Pristina Airport launched a new incentive scheme in a bid to attract new carriers and encourage exiting operators to boost flights. The incentives, which came into effect on March 27, will run until 2018. The scheme encourages airlines to launch flights to Pristina, base aircraft there, operate during off-peak hours and offers a 30% discount for handling and landing.
Comments
Gold in Judo :-))
Hopefully OU actually goes ahead with the idea.
Cesto sam putovao za Pristinu, i letovi su uvijek bili popunjeni, posebnice srpanj i kolovoz kada nema niti jednog slobodnog mjesta. Samo je lose to sto za Zagreb polazi vrlo kasno, a povratak iz Pristine vrlo rano.
Nadam se da ce se vratiti s vecim frekvencijama, kao i ponovno uvesti Tiranu.
Ovo je odlicna sansa za ASL da ponudi bolje Konekcije za putnike i da ih preuzme.
INN-NS
Although it is sad they're leaving, I think they can regain 19000 pax for Pristina but they'll need to work at it, also they can't change arm and a leg as they used to for the route now that many carriers have come to the city.
Sarajevo remains best bet for OU, expand there, apply for subsidies from the local government and get the status of a national carrier.
However they really need to work on Croatian market hard, as more carriers are coming to Zagreb and summer seasons on the coast are becoming tought to compete with 50 other carriers, they must have a strategy of staying in the game.
Yeah sounds about right, although terminal will be ready from looks of it in January.
BTW not sure if I mentioned before, new terminal can be expanded to 127000sqm, from current 65500sqm, plan is to widen the terminal itself by additional 70m, the new section will house expanded baggage sorting facility, additional 3 carousels for maximum of 8 (current terminal has 3 + space for 2 more) and additional space in arrival nd departure areas. Number of check ins will also be increased from maximum of 50 to 100 with this expansion. And number of passenger boarding bridges will go up to 20, well 16, however four of these will be for wide body aircraft.
So from one end to other end of the pier will be around 800m, or extending from current 325m to 800m. however eastern pier will eventually have passenger boarding bridges on both sides of the pier, not sure if four or six PBB will be added, however total number of PBBs will be around 24-26 and total designed capacity of the terminal is set to be around 0 million pax.
Master plan envisions 2nd Runways and 2nd Terminal, on the other side of airport city and hotel. Air Force is also looking to re-locate when that happens further east, a 3rd 2.5km runway for Air Force only is also planned, however these are long term plans all in Zagreb's master plan. It is estimated some 3000 residents local to Airport and land covered by the future master plan will need to be relocated, mostly small outlying villages with few hundred residents.
Cost of the move and relocation of said villagers is estimated at 400 million euros.
Once fully implemented master plan (around 2040) entire airport and air force will cover an area of 175 hectares, employ around
20-25000 people. NATO will finance 3rd runway and re-location of the air force base to new location 3km east of present location.
Master plan was published by GUP Zagreb in 2015.
and 1750 hectares of land, not 175.
Dakle, da ja imam tu informaciju, potvrdio bih je, bez obzira na domoljublje, ali nemam.
I baš je grotesno to što vi znate više od mojih "pobuda" od mene samog.
Does that make any sense??
Now, the air force base right there in plane site bothers me and if they relocate it, that'd be great! That military runway could then be extended and you'd have a second runway if they are so intent on having one.
One more thing; do you perhaps have the information as to when the construction on the eastern connection to the road leading towards the Homeland Bridge should begin? Because without that connection, the approach to the new terminal will be a disaster. The trace has been dedicated, but the time is running out, considering the terminal opens for business in 7 months.