NEWS FLASH
Croatian charter carrier Limitless Airways has discontinued all operations with its Croatian Air Operator's Certificate (AOC) suspended. The airline was launched in May 2015 by the well-established Swedish tour operator Scandjet. It operated charter flights from Rijeka to several cities in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, with a Croatian-registered Airbus A320 aircraft operated by local crew. All staff have been laid off as a result. The A320 jet in question, registered 9A-SLA, has since been ferried to Monastir in Tunisia.
So it was limited after all!
ReplyDelete:D good one!
DeleteSo Rijeka will have less pax. than in summer season 2016. LOL
ReplyDeleteIt can easily be replaced by another charter airline. And I don't see what's so funny.
DeleteIt's not funny, it's sad that on all airports in Croatia we have significant growth for summer season 2017., well almost all, Rijeka is exception!
DeleteRJK has always had, and still has, incompetent and ignorant management. Easyjet, for example, chose RJK to be its FIRST destination in Croatia, more than 10 years ago. They started with 7 weekly flights, 4 to London and 3 to Bristol, and had plans for RJK to be the point in Croatia which will "cover" Istria, Kvarner, Zagreb, Slovenia, Trieste, Lika and North Dalmatia, and to open numerous services to different destinations, not only the UK. But the management (ok, former) of RJK literaly chased them away after only 2 seasons by doing absolutely nothing needed for the flights to continue to operate (for example 3 times in a row plane landed from London on saturday evening, and EVERYTHING on the airport was closed - no ground transportation to anywhere, no exchange office, no kiosk, no information desk, nothing, nothing, nothing). Easy tried to warn them about it and gave them some time to change it, but they didn't give a dam about it, and only after that (they had some 90% LF on London and about 80% LF on Bristol flights from RJK) Easy "moved" to Zagreb, and after that to Split, Dubrovnik, and so on, and today RJK is practically te only airport in Croatia EZY doesn't serve and would probably never, based on what happened in the (recent) past. The only 2 solutions for RJK are privatization/concession, or closing it down. Current model, with current management will never work. No matter how much are they "trying" they are stuck in distant past, mentally
DeleteNo one will take RJK at concession, that is obvious. They will just stay small seasonal airport for LCC, such as Ryanair and Germanwings.
DeleteBit surprised. Thought they had good business. But problem with tourism in Croatia, even more in North (Istria/Kvarner) is that it is very very seasonal. Hence the following speculation: I guess they could not make enough of a win in 5 months to cover the losses partially without operations in rest 7 months of the year...
ReplyDeleteI have to correct you, the North is far more organized and we have a longer season than Dalmatia.
DeleteBut still much more bus and car tourists than plane, especially out of season.
DeleteAnd for sure company can not survive on 5 months per year especially with one plane (operation costs with one plane is much higher than when you have fleet with several planes).
@Anon 12h51: I was referring to tourism where people travel by airplane. Everyone can see how much more popular air travel to Southern HR is compared to Northern HR (even just by comparing no. of pax of the respective airports). And in the South it is warm for a weeks more per year. Many more people from Central Europe use their car to go Istria/Kvarner.
DeleteYou are right about air tourism in Dalmatia. And even so, even if they have a couple of weeks of more sun, their season is short. I wonder Why? ;-)
Delete1) "Limitless" flew abt 3 times per year to RJK, so this will not have an impact to the number of PAX in RJK.
ReplyDelete"It operated charter flights from Rijeka to several cities in Sweden, Denmark and Finland" from above is the disinformation. It flew mostly from Scandinavia to Greece od from France to Canaries. The most harm is - one big plane less in Croatia's register.
2) When "Limitless" was established, airport's general manager Tomislav Palalić announced in Novi List the construction of the hangar, see
http://www.novilist.hr/Vijesti/Hrvatska/Treca-domaca-kompanija-Krenuli-letovi-hrvatskog-Limitless-airwaysa
So, politically established manager of the airport has announced that they are going to build the hangar in RJK for a single plane leased by Swedish tour operator for it's subsidiary company "Limitless" from some plane broker in Netherlands.
Župan (Major?) Zlatko Komadina has bought it (or just pretended to, or just didn't care too much) saying that it is good for the bussiness and image of the airport.
No more need to say.
generally, I agree with the most of what you said - I just want to make one small correction - there are no "big" planes in croatian register - "big" plane is (or at least we used to call it some 20 years ago in JAT Yugoslav Airlines) widebodied plane for long-haul traffic. That's the only "big" in civil aviation (especially today). 319/320/321/737/757 and similar, is medium; both size and range,
DeleteF70-100/EMB/CRJ/ATR7/Q400, is small, both size and range - as simple as that.
It has nothing to do with bad managment in RJK or bad numbers in sales, Limitless and Scandjet in Sweden has a court claim against them for 5 million euros from Air Croatia and as they know they will loose the claim the have put both the Swedish and Croatian companies in bankruptcy to be able to open in a new name.
ReplyDeleteThe Swedish financial police has also opened an investigation for tax fraud as money has been sent to Croatian companies from Sweden that has been emptied on money with false invoices.