Dubrovnik Airport readies for busy winter

Dubrovnik Airport is bracing for a busy winter season with a number of carriers planning to boost their flights to the city during the slow months. Spanish low cost airline, Vueling, which previously announced it would upgrade its summer flights between Rome and Dubrovnik to year-round operations, will now also operate services from Barcelona to the Croatian city throughout the winter. Flights will be maintained twice per week. Furthermore, Turkish Airlines will boost frequencies to Dubrovnik over the winter when compared to last year, while the airport is also in talks with several other airlines in an attempt to ease seasonality.

The General Manager of Dubrovnik Airport, Roko Tolić, said, "Compared to last year, Turkish Airlines has seen its passenger numbers increase 84% on its Dubrovnik service. For us, it is also important that, during the winter, Turkish Airlines will add an additional weekly flight, for a total of four. Combined with Croatia Airlines' service to Frankfurt, we also have high expectations of British Airways and several other carriers we are currently negotiating with". Earlier this month, Dubrovnik Airport welcomed its millionth traveller of the year, which was two weeks ahead of 2016. "This year we managed to reach the milestone two weeks ahead of 2016. The figures so far have been fantastic. Traffic is up 20%, and now we have our millionth passenger earlier than ever before. This month we will welcome around 400.000 passengers, maybe even more. This is encouraging and we could surpass two million travellers as early as October", Mr Tolić said.

Dubrovnik Airport opened its new Terminal C building earlier this year. It has now completed tender procedures for the second phase of its major development project, which will include apron expansion, the overhaul of its runway and taxiways, as well as the relocation of the fuel farm and enclosed facilities for maintenance, operations and ground equipment. Valued at 115.2 million euros, the project will enhance the airport's handling capacity to some 3.98 million passengers per year by 2032. Work is expected to begin this winter and is scheduled for completion in 2020. "To our satisfaction, two major consortiums submitted their bids during the tender process, indicating that we will have a very serious contractor. This will ensure that in the years to come, we will complete our major project, which we started off this year with the opening of the new passenger terminal", Mr Tolić concluded.