First TUI, now Norwegian is downsizing its presence on the Croatian coast. Let's hope more airlines announce flights like Volotea to compensate.

They fly everywhere except Ljubljana and Skopje. Why?

BEG seems to be their most stable and successful market so far, this summer there will be 5 weekly flights.

I think this airline will eventually collapse. They are expanding all over the place while the amount of debt they have accumulated only keeps on increasing.

No market. Plus in SKP there is Wizz that flies to that village 120 km from Oslo.

LJU has a lot of connections via Star Alliance hubs and Slovenes and Norwegians are wealthy enough to pay a bit more for connecting flights.

I'm not talking about long haul connecting flights, I'm talking about P2P. There are no flights between Ljubljana and Scandinavia.

They are not that active on the ex-Yu markets compared to their competitors.

LOL you have forgotten SPU

It is a matter of time. I give them max 1 year.

Well a glimps on the route announcement section to your right gives you the answer.

SPU? SPU has 3 daily flights by SAS to OSL, ARN and CPH. DY has a bit of a competition here :D

I'm surprised that CPH-ZAG didn't work for them.

I have never tried them. What are they like service wise? Has anyone flown with them long haul?

Norwegian is the fifth largest airline in Croatia based on seat share.

Hey, OSL-SPU on SAS is 4 x a day :D

Yes, DY is especially popular in SPU in November, December, January... Oh wait...

Obviously not enough demand. Adria also suspended Ljubljana- Stockholm.

@anon there are seasonal flights between Helsinki and Ljubljana by Finnair.

One of the best LCC in Europe. After them comes easyJet and then long list of nobody...

I am more surprised about ARN-ZAG, even OU flies it in summer only. I am surprised the market is that small.

How many flights did they operate from ARN to ZAG? Was it one weekly?

They are not bad, they have free internet onboard all of their flights.

A friend of mine used them from Orlando to Belgrade via Stockholm and the service was decent. He also made a bid for upgrade to their 'business' class for 200USD and it was a good value for the money

I would not say that LJU has so mach connections via Star Alliance hubs and bases:

BRU
LJU 13
ZAG 16

TXL
LJU 0
ZAG 3

CGN
LJU 0
ZAG 7

CPH
LJU 7
ZAG 7

DUS
LJU 0
ZAG 4

FRA
LJU 21
ZAG 35

IST
LJU 14
ZAG 14

MUC
LJU 14
ZAG 28

OSL
LJU 0
ZAG 3

ARN
LJU 0
ZAG 3

VIE
LJU 14
ZAG 33

WAW
LJU 6
ZAG 14

ZRH
LJU 20
ZAG 17

In total weekly flights
LJU 109
ZAG 184

but still ZAG has many P2P routes, and routes to Star Alliance hubs in other Croatian airports (PUY, ZAD, RJK, SPU, DBV, OSI) with more than 100 weekly flights,

Slovenians are wealthy enough to take GoOpti to TSF and take cheap LCC flights.

What is going on with ZAG? They are losing frequencoes on one of the rare LCC that flies there.

It looks like the fairytail about bringing new airlines in ZAG is over...

Norwegian are at risk of going bust, even if they manage the summer, by next winter they will collapse. I wouldn't risk flying with them!

Norwegian is a "low fare" airline rather than "low cost". This is what brought them in their current financial situation.

TXL? That's a Eurowings base and they are mostly concentrated on point to point sales. So OU doesn't profit from any connections, same with CGN.

Also LJU-WAW is 7, not 6 weekly flights.

I think it is exaggerated. The fact they reduce flights to Croatia does not have to mean automatically they will go bust.

It is certain that they have some financial issues, but they aren't the first and surely not the last air carrier that survives despite having financial issues

I think the market was there but airport charges have eroded yields so it wasn't worth sticking around.

Half of the new anouncements are to the Croatian coast, do not you worry.

Hmm DY suspends ZAG-ARN the same year FR launches NYO-BNX. Coincidence?

You might be right, but then it looks really funny seeing ZAG is in negotitations with Ryanair

https://www.exyuaviation.com/2018/11/ryanair-in-talks-over-zagreb-and-split.html

Reducing short-haul network as cost saving measures while launching adventurous long-haul flights (ATH-JFK)? This story sounds very familiar to me, but I'm not sure which country will subsidize Norwegian. Anyway, consolidation in EU aviation continues and Norwegian took a big step forward in this race.

Yeah but we see some like TUI or Norwegian reduce their presence, advance bookings must be getting soft.

There is generally a large Serbian community in Sweden. I suppose until now they used ZAG, that is those from northern Srpska.

Also could it be that DY is getting subventions from Bosnia if the embassy intervened regarding OSL-SJJ?

Many will say it is coincidence but we know:

The truth is out there

Well they can always redeploy the 737s to other more profitable destinations while Dreamliners are coming regardless of anything else so they need to expand. That's why they are launching ATH-JFK.

FR will walk away the moment they get the airport's price list. They will just compare it to the one in BNX.

PRN flights seem to be doing well for them. They have been expanding there every year.

Nice to see a new (western) route to Sarajevo, even if it is only for 2 months. Scandinavia is so underserved from Sarajevo, considering the size of the Bosnian diaspora there.

Anonymous at 09:36
Or more likely the explanation is that those two airlines are in well known financial troubles.
If it was a Dalmatian coast issue they wouldn't be cutting their flight schedule all over Europe.

It will be interesting to see if it has any affect on Wizz Air's GOT-Tuzla flights.

There are very little croats in stockholm and especially croats from zagreb area in general, most of the croats from croatia ate 2nd, 3rd generations by now, the new wave of croatians in sweden is from bosnia, and croats live primarily in the west coast of sweden (gothenburg area)

I don't think 8 Norwegian flights to Sarajevo on this route can have much of an affect on Wizz in Tuzla. Gothenburg is their second busiest route from TZL. They had 50.930 passengers in 2017.

ATH-JFK during the Summer has massive demand, very expensive tickets and the planes are completely foul.
They will make money on that route and also on the BCN-ORD.
In Europe their problem is that they try to compete with the likes of FR and W6 while paying Scandinavian level of wages to their staff.
I don't see them having a happy long term life as a company.

Other than Croatia it is unfortunate they haven't launched any routes from their bases outside of Scandinavia to ex-Yu.

Very true and only recently have they turned a few seasonal routes into year-round. Like many other airlines, they are very slow on this market which, I think, has potential.

Yes but they are not suspending all flights, just those that are underperforming. So...

I will just leave this here
https://i.imgur.com/5b0bTfP.png

Agree, especially from Spain but now it's too late.

Interestingly enough BEG used to have GOT flights which were discontinued when Jat became, Air Serbia. How come Norwegian never stepped in on this route?

What's with these new routes??? Flights that operate once weekly are hardly profitable.

Wizz Air flies the route. It's useless competing against them.

Could new Wizz Turku-Skopje have impact on Norwegian's Helsinki-Pristina?

Hahahaha pure gem. Maybe these are the big plans they had for ZAG?

Says who?

Because BEG-GOT is operated by Wizz Air.

They are suspending flights from expensive bases like Norway, Sweden, Denmark where they have to pay high salaries to their staff.
At the same time they launch flights from lower wage cost countries like Spain and Greece.
Still, I see them to continue to straggle, especially if the price of Oil goes back up at 2018 levels.

They could start flying to INI.

Why to INI?

@9.07 what are you talking about? Adria flies year-round to Copenhagen and they do very well on the route. Plus there is seasonal Helsinki-Ljubljana too operated by Finnair.

Big diaspora from eastern and southeastern Serbia living in Sweden.

Actually I think Oslo-Nis would be a good route for Norwegian to launch.

It's nice to see that they mostly use the B737MAX to BEG.

I think a lot of people from Belgrade area also live in Sweden. Otherwise W6 would have cancelled this route

yupp. it will be an interesting company to monitor. etihad size spectacle could be in play.

what is interesting is that they stole pilots from ryanair and pressured o'learry to allow unions. now they will fail or downsize considerably, a lot of pilots will be on the market, but ryanair business model was changed indfinetly. all in 2y period.

It will be good if ZAG keeps 3% growth this year

Hahah, this is awesome

They also increased ARN-BEG from one to two weekly. OSL is now 3 weekly year-round.

I think that's realistic, as they will have around 8 new weekly frequencies this summer.

Yes, but it is so poor result.

Well done BEG!

I didn't forget SPU, it's a summer seasonal destination for them. I am speaking about year-round destinations.

Good to see them add some new routes but unfortunate they are all seasonal. Maybe they extend some of the routes.

I heard when the founded the airline, they had plans of being profitable as well. Maybe these are the plans they had :D

And especially because ZAG had a zero growth, despite the Handball European Championship last year in January, when the city was full of fans, that arrived by plane. So you may critisize it but in the end it was a very good result for ZAG in January and they will grow to 3,5 Million pax this year, while Croatia will reach around 11,5 million passengers at all airports.

ZAD/SPU/ and DBV had great results in January, so was ZAGs.

Poor attempt to be funny

their routes to PRN are all seasonal incl. HEL. now they could use Turku-SKP in winter

Please find any other example that any of the cities from ex-Yu had minus or zero growth 12 months after some sport event was organized there.

It seems to be only case with ZAG. Or better to say justification of poor results.

With Eurowings you can do normal connections like with any legacy carrier. Even you can combine Eurowings and Lufthansa, Austrian, Dolomiti... when you buy ticket it will put Eurowings on list like any other Lufthansa group carrier. So you can fly Zagreb-Dusseldorf-Berlin with Eurowings and back with Lufthansa via Frankfurt for example.

Wizz needs to increase GOT to at least 4pw, many of us in gothenburg area needs to go throu MMX sometimes its really annoying, there is potential in GOT for even more flights than that. Is there any plans of increasing GOT or is it too late for this year?

For sure 3 times per week Croatia Airlines ZAG-ARN with connection to SJJ, SKP, OMO, PUY, ZAD, OSI, SPU, DBV did not help Norwegian.

Norwegian for sure is not in same position they were 3 or 5 years ago. They are on edge of bankruptcy, selling many planes (some 30% of their fleet will be sold in 3 year period), selling shares in bank they had, issued extra bonds (for 3rd time in one year), cutting frequencies all around globe, taking huge loans, closing bases, cutting staff, shrinking level of service...

So, their plan today and several years ago (when they were in huge green) are not same. For example they move from Asia, closing almost all Asian routes. You should know that before putting here some sort of serious comment.

September 2017 was several years ago?
Serious comment?
Hilarious

Are there these days (February) direct flights ZAG-ARN operated by OU or ARN is only seasonal?

DY have serious financial issues and might follow AB's steps soon.
They have extremely low prices on many routes and fierce competition with legacy carriers too.

On the other hand, it seems that ZAG indeed is in a stagnation period. No new routes, now fewer DY frequencies. No OU expansion. Situation is becoming worrying for the figures.

INI - there is no doubt that INI-HEL will immediately work out. This way, this will be a direct competition with SKP-TKU.

SJJ - finally a new Euro route and not ME one.

SKP - absolutely no way of seeing DY anytime soon. Unless they consider SKP-PMI or SKP-ORY.

They need to start flights from Scandinavia to Ohrid.

Where did you see INI-HEL?

12 months after? How else could you compare two same months if not letting 12 months pass? :D

Btw, just because you call it justification, it is not a justification but an explantion.

Or would you call the negative growth in PRN this months because of Germania´s demise a justification for the poor results? or is it an EXPLANTION?

I see you didn't find any other example of it.

From the other side you are comparing withdrawal of air carrier Germania as of one of the biggest contributors to PRN results with organization of sports event in ZAG?

Priceless.

Last year I was pleasantly surprised with Eurowings. Travelled Zag-Txl-Yyz. In Berlin I was transferring onto an Air Canada Rouge flight. Was able to checkin my bags in Zagreb and picked them up in Toronto.

This year it was seasonal, but this winter it will be all year.

LJU had a lot of charter flights to IST in september 2017(basketball) and they still had a growth in 2018

In air traffic 2 years is "several years ago". 2 years in air traffic is like 10 years in other business. Your should know that. Expansion and plans in 2017 was based on 2016 profit which was 154,8 million EUR. In 2017 they were in red 263,8 million EUR. A little difference, isn't it?

There was more from the same source. I guess everyone's plans changed.
https://i.imgur.com/fgjAJU5.png

@An.09.19 and 10.40.
BEG is the biggest ex-yu airport, with the biggest passenger numbers and will always be, no doubt about it. But it's not "the most stable and succesful" for Norwegian. It's SPU , which has more Norwegian passengers compared to BEG, and the steadiest growth, year by year. Are all those passengers carried during 7 or 12 months, is irrelevant. And I really don't understand why some people have urge to point out BEG as the best even in the cases when it's not, like now. Is it some kind of complex of what?

Yes, they were all in red starting from 2017 so therefore all of them including highly profitable easyJet had to cancel ZAG

Of course they did.

@pozdrav iz Rijeke,

Do you have any real numbers to support your claim that DY had more passengers to SPU than to BEG?

@An.12.58
Norwegian time table from Split, summer 2019 :

Bergen 3 weekly
Copenhagen DAILY
Gothenburg 2 weekly
Helsinki 5 weekly
London Gatwick 2 weekly
Oslo DAILY plus 2 weekly (wed, fr)
Stavanger 1 weekly
Stockholm Arlanda DAILY
Trondheim 4 weekly

Do your maths :)

Yes but EW's business model in TXL and CGN isn't a typical hub that's after transfer passengers, it's mostly about point to point passengers. You can't compare it to DUS, MUC or FRA.

They clearly over-expanded and the biggest issue seem to be long haul operations. However, most of the changes they are making right now are on the short haul ops., which is a bit confusing.

Long haul low cost doesn't seem to work well between Europe and North America.

Let's take a closer look.

Split-Bergen, 3 weekly
Stars: 18.06.2019
Ends: 08.08.2019

Split-Copanhagen
Stars: 03.04.2019
Ends: 26.10.2019
Until mid-June it's two weekly, then six weekly until August when it goes down to 2 weekly. So it's not even daily during the peak season.

Split-Gothenburg
Starts: 31.03.2019
Ends: 20.10.2019

Split-Helsinki
Stars: 02.04.2019
Ends: 26.10.2019
September it goes down from 6 to 5.

Split-Gatwick
Starts: 03.04.2019
Ends: 26.10.2019

Split-Oslo
Starts: 02.04.2019
Ends: 26.10.2019
4 weekly in May. 5 from June. 9 starts in the second half of June and ends in the last week of June, so for about two weeks. Then it goes back to daily and in September it's back at 4 weekly.

Split-Stavanger - 1 weekly
Stars: 22.06.2019
Ends: 10.08.2019

I was too lazy to do the last two but I saw that ARN is 5 or 6 outside the busiest periods.

So the numbers in Amadeus don't match yours. I still think BEG is ahead of SPU. ;)

Dude, just admit that you are not an insider, you don't have this kind of information and stop embarrassing yourself. I admire your love affair with one airport in particular but I don't think there is anybody here who is taking you seriously.

Yes but OU was even before and it didn't affect DY. I think it was FR that killed them off.

Very conveniently you are "lazy" to list daily Stockholm and 4 weekly Trondheim and to count and then you "think" BEG is ahead of SPU, with 5 flights compared to 40. My point proved. Discussion over. Cheers!

You purposely misinformed the public and now you are running away. You said OSL-SPU is 9 weekly when in reality 9 weekly operates like two weeks a year. Other destinations operate a few times per week for about three to five months. BEG on the other hand operates 5 times the whole year, in July and in August and in March... and so it compensates the difference during the period when there are absolutely no flights in Split, you know that period when the airport welcomes 30.000 passengers?

Also once again you lie. Trondhein starts in May as one weekly. Four weekly happens end of June and in August it goes back to 1 weekly. Route ends on 26.10.

ARN ends as well on 26.10 and it's only 6 weekly during the peak period. Other times it's 4.

So you see, all the numbers you presented on here were wrong, totally wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself. I guess you hate of BEG and Serbia is making you disillusioned.

OSL 9 weekly, ARN daily... HA!

Then again, maybe DY has once again reduced Croatia and you didn't notice it. ;)

So, not true. You can connect to other Eurowings flights, to Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Brussels, Dolomiti, and some others like Air Canada Rouge as normal business practice! Their hubs are Cologne, Sttutgart, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Vienna and Hamburg, but you can also connect to Eurowings flights in Zurich, Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Geneva.

Huge financial crises kills Norwegian, not Ryanair or Croatia Airlines.

Ryanair in BNX made this route a financial disaster for them.

Not exactly an "overhaul" - more like a tweaking of their schedule. Nothing drastic at all. Considering their dire financial situation, one can expect refinements to their schedule across their network, not only to the Western Balkans.

Ah moj Nikola, Wizz Air should have done many things in the past in BEG but we all know how little they did and how passive they have become in the end.

well it would be good that slovenian government turns MBX to LCC airport, if not then LJU - OSL/ARN/GOT/MMX/RKV with norwegian?!? it would be good to start some of this connections.

SPU : 5 weeks x 40 weekly flights + 5 weeks x 20 weekly flights + 10 weeks x 10 weekly flights, is 200 + 100 + 100 weekly flights, which is 400 flights, during four and a half summer months, based on your numbers. I even didn't include all flights and all summer months. On the other hand, BEG : 52 weeks x 5 weekly flights, which is 260 flights. So, once again Split has minimum of 400 Norwegian flights per year, while Belgrade has 260. All my information is from Avioradar webpage, I did not invent it, as I have no reason to do it. I could say the same things for you which you said about me, but I will refrain from that, as my level of tolerance and culture is obviously on different level from yours. I really had no intention to discuss any more knowing I was right but I had to write this because never in my 53 years of age, some of which I spent in Belgrade, nobody ever called me a lier. So if someone has reason to be proud of something, after these numbers and this text, I think it's you. Proud under quotations, of course. Cheers and good night!

I was commenting on Norwegian situation 2017, and today, but I was not author of that post. I don't have inside information from Zagreb airport.

Soon enough they’ll be flying nowhere soon.

Yeah, for an airline (lowcost so low yield) servicing that kind of debt is near impossible. To expand the way they did requires big cap ex but with money you already have, not money you borrow.

I flew trans Atlantic with them in 2016. Not once during the entire flight was I approached by a flight attendant asking if I wanted or needed anything, not even water!

Later I found out that you had to order everything via the in flight entertainment system. Had no idea and would have if I was told.

Found it strange that this was not mentioned, not on the ticket, not during the flight. Noticed other passengers were confused too and wondered why some people were getting food and drinks and others weren’t but no one seemed to be able to ask anyone because all the flight attenednts seemed to always be MIA.

So you are saying some random Croatian blog is more credible than Amadeus?! One would think in your decades of life you would have learned better but I guess not. And anyway, like I said, BEG compensates during the slow months when SPU has no traffic which is another indicator of BEG being more successful while in SPU they have to stick to only a few months. Airlines like stability.

Valjda svako zna da je Norwegian AS pred bankrotom. Rezu gdje god stignu

Excuse me, which part of 400 against 240 you don't understand?

As far as I know you cannot find any charters in Amadeus GDS.