Low cost carrier Wizz Air is likely to discontinue flights between London Luton and Ljubljana at the end of the summer season. Ticket sales have been suspended past October 25. The airline initially planned to boost capacity between the two cities during the 2019/2020 winter by utilising its larger 230-seat Airbus A321 aircraft. Services were scheduled to run three times per week, before increasing to four in December. Flights are expected to resume in the summer of 2020. Wizz Air will add a number of new routes from the British capital over the coming months, however, some will be launched at the expense of others. With the London suspension and the previously announced hiatus of its Charleroi - Ljubljana service, Wizz Air will temporarily withdraw from the Slovenian market this winter for the first time in seven years.
The budget carrier confirmed this week it will resume flights from Charleroi at the start of the 2020 summer season. In a statement to “Seenews”, the airline said, "Wizz Air always monitors the performance of its routes to allow for the most popular destinations to have the lowest possible fares. The Ljubljana - Brussels [Charleroi] route is seasonalised in winter and it will come back in the IATA summer season 2020 in the middle of March and April”. Wizz Air began serving the Slovenian market in October of 2012 and has maintained flights from both Charleroi and London ever since.
Ljubljana is well connected to a number of London’s airports. easyJet serves the Slovenian capital nine times per week from Stansted and four weekly from Gatwick. This summer, British Airways introduced two weekly seasonal operations between Heathrow and the Slovenian capital, which will come to an end on Monday. A total of 239.727 passengers flew between Ljubljana and London last year, with 47% of those opting for easyJet's Stansted service, followed by Wizz Air's Luton flights and easyJet's Gatwick operations. Wizz Air serves several former Yugoslav markets from London with flights to Belgrade, Pristina, Ohrid, Skopje and Split (seasonally). It previously also maintained flights to Tuzla but later discontinued the service.
Bad news for LJU just keeps on rolling
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame and a real blow for LJU this winter.
ReplyDeleteIf there route was second best performing on London market why the suspension? Even if seasonal.
ReplyDeleteBecause they can probably utilise the aircraft on other routes where they can make more money.
DeleteThey probably got the loads at the expense of decent yields. Also, Slovenians are richest in ex-YU so easyJet is probably preferred for flights to London.
DeleteEasyjet offers a much better product and STN/LGW offer quicker and easier transit to London.
DeleteYes but their prices will probably go up now.
DeletePrices need to go up. People need to be prepared to pay more to fly. Artificially low fares are damaging the aviation industry.
DeleteAnon 9:30, I don't know where you get your info from, but it is in fact easier to travel to London from LTN than from STN. LTN is on the same railroad as LGW, just on the other side of London. It usually takes around 45 minutes to get from either LTN or LGW to King's Cross (compared to slightly longer STN's 50 minutes but you also can't take a direct train from STN to King's Cross, you need to take the Tube). Also, LTN has easiest access to M1 and M25 of the three airports mentioned. LTN and LGW also have direct train lines to City Thameslink and Blackfrairs stations which make them more appealing to business passengers.
DeleteTo add to my previous post, the reason why I mentioned ease of access to M1 and M25 is because those are the two most important motorways for London. M1 is the main motorway that connects London to northern England (Liverpool, Manchester,...) and Scotland. M25 is the orbital motorway that is used to go around London instead of through London and is the main motorway used for accessing different parts of London.
DeleteAnd now compare LTN's and STN's train station and you will see the difference.
DeleteIn LTN you have to take the bus which takes at least 10 min, if there is no traffic (not the case in the summer), as the train station is at the bottom of the hill.
In STN you just go two floors down from the terminal and you are at the station.
The bus from Luton terminal to Luton Airport Parkway is 5 minutes, not at least 10, and is included in my time calculations. It is hardly more of an inconvenience than if you had to be bused from your plane to the terminal.
DeleteWizz is opening a lot of new routes from LTN. Castellon, Catania, Oslo, Saint Petersburg and Vienna. For now the causalities of that are Verona and Ljubljana.
ReplyDeleteBari is also becoming seasonal
DeleteThey are also reducing some flights from Gatwick, Budapest is among them which is going down from 7 to 6. This is the second reduction this winter for BUD after EW announced the reduction of CGN-BUD from 7 to 4.
DeleteWhat could be the reason?
DeleteThe market is getting oversaturated, there is only so much a market can handle without transfers. That's probably why they are getting LO to expand there.
DeleteBUD cargo is also in a free fall, I wonder if there will be more bad news for them in the future. Wizz Air also seems to be out of places to expand, they are launching Kazan and Minsk.
DeleteBasically LJU is left with 2 LCCs – easyjet and Transavia.
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteWell done Fraport.
ReplyDeleteMaybe time for Adria to return to London?
ReplyDeletelol, good one
DeleteThe time for Adria is running out in every sense of the word.
DeleteJP must immediately launch Heathrow flights¡
DeleteSo easyjet will be only airline with flights to London. Shame BA didn't extend their season.
ReplyDeleteStop extending Adria's life by forgetting debts and start attracting more airlines.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteWell I see this more as a fail on Wizz Air's behalf than Ljubljana's.
ReplyDeleteHow? LJU loses to key routes and Wizz opens another 5 from London.
DeleteLuton and Charleroi key routes?
DeleteWell now you have the overpriced Adria which is paid to fly to Brussels. Enjoy... if your flight is not cancelled.
Deleteadria is paid to fly to brussles exactly as any other route : it is receiving revenue from the tickets the government entities buy one ticket at a time...it's not a PSO style or subsidised route. So if there is no flight, no money for adria.
DeleteBut besause of government contract provisions they are obliged to arrange rebooking or reroute to the governemnt ticket holders and have to bear any cost that is above the price they charged for the ticket per contract. And this can get expensive for adria as these are then generally last-minute rebookings, so BRU is the last route that would see a cancellation. They will rather cancel something else and shuffle the aircraft to the BRU line.
How could this affect LJU this winter? Losing two rows with relatively good LF is ideal.
ReplyDelete* routes, typo
DeleteAir France is almost doubling flights this winter so they will be fine.
DeleteSeems like Wizz Air can't dominate in ex-YU markets where they have a local carrier. They completely failed in LJU and they are stagnating in BEG. SKP seems to be the only market where they are growing, even Tuzla is slowing down, close to stagnation.
ReplyDeleteThey are still no. 1 airline in Macedonia and Bosnia a d number 2 in Serbia.
DeleteNumber 2. in Serbia after a 500% gap behind JU.
DeleteBrexit?
ReplyDeleteNo.
DeleteThere won't be any Brexit, so don't worry about that!
DeleteWhat I doubt get is that they planned to increase capacity to A321 and now they completely cancel flights.
ReplyDeleteThey planned to use A321 last winter between London and Ljubljana as well but in the end they shelved that and used A320 instead.
DeleteTrue
DeleteHahaha, let Adria go bust, they say. Airlines are waiting in line, they say. And I say, when Adria goes bust, you'll be using Flixbus to get anywhere. Or your fabulous trains.
ReplyDeleteFlixbus is faster than Adria on some routes already with all the cancellations and triangle routes.
DeleteThis was an opportunity for British Airways to keep flights from Heathrow over winter.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know how they performed this summer?
DeleteThey had 1.467 passengers in July.
Delete:(
ReplyDeletePerhaps an opportunity for Ryanair to finally enter the market.
ReplyDeleteWith LJU's pricing I doubt it unless they give them some deal to fly for free.
DeleteI think Slovenia starts to feel the slower car and other manufacturing industry in Germany which impacts Slovenia as well and people start to think twice whether to book a city break quicky
ReplyDeleteHaha. I know I commented a while ago how Wizzair will fully exit Slovenian market soon, but I didn't think it will be this soon. LJU is just pathetic.
ReplyDeleteFor all of you who have not read the article correctly and were already happy thinking Wizzair is leaving Ljubljana: "The budget carrier confirmed this week it will resume flights from Charleroi at the start of the 2020 summer season.".
DeleteApparently a lot of commentators really hate LJU. Who knows from which country or city they come from. Apparently from the city without LCCs. :)
Starting a comment with a "haha" just because Wizzair is maybe discontinuing a route from LJU is just pathetic.
+100 last anon
DeleteWhy are there still no LCC flights between UK and LJU from anywhere north of Luton, namely Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham? Is it down to landing charges at Brnik or an assumption that the cave-dwellers in the northern wastelands are not overly keen on foreign lands?
ReplyDeleteNot enough demand.
DeleteIf even Wizz Air cannot maintain 3pw flights to LON, then you can forget about sustainable flights to anywhere else in the UK.
Nonsense. How do you gauge demand if there are no flights to measure it by? It is more a reflection of the London-centric mentality in the UK that continues to perpetuate the North-South divide. Manchester and Liverpool have tremendous music and sporting heritage; the former is also an economic powerhouse in its own right.
ReplyDeleteSo it is impossible to estimate demand between say Ljubljana and Bagdad, because there are no flights to measure it?
DeleteI agree that the rest of the UK offers nice holidays as well, but most of the people go to UK primarily to see London. There is very limited business co-operation between UK and Slovenia.
I don't see any non-London UK flights from LJU in the future.
Simple - the UK has a rich history of travelling to the former Yugoslavia and since secession; it also offers a wealth of destinations for visitors. Excuse my ignorance if I am incorrect but there isn't such a link between Slovenia/ex Yu and Iraq, Bag(h)dad or elsewhere...
DeleteI wouldn't be surprised if they are cutting underperforming routes because of Vienna. I can't imagine them making any money there and they also starting cutting there.
ReplyDeleteWizz recently confirmed that their Vienna ops were already highly profitable after the first year there. Not just profitable but highly profitable.
DeleteRiiiiiiight, I highly doubt that especially since they are already cutting like five routes from Vienna. What else are they supposed to say? A PR fluff piece is supposed to be positive.
DeleteStop spreading lies. They are introducing 13 new routes and cutting 2.
DeleteThey are cutting like four: Malmo, Gdansk, Tuzla and another one can't remember now. Furthermore yesterday they announced the suspension of around 6 routes from Luton and the reduction of frequencies on another 6 or 7.
DeleteSince you don't have proof of their super duper financial performance in Vienna then I guess the only indicator of facts are the ones above. They must be feeling the financial pressure from their owners to start making money.
Routes being cut from Luton: Ljubljana, Catania, Verona, Turku, Tallinn and Bari.
Reductions to Bratislava, Kosice, Poprad, Prague, Bergen, Oslo, Stavanger, Lviv and Lublin.
Not good, not good at all.
Okay right - so they suspend 4 and introduce 13 new ones from Vienna. Plus base one more A321 there!
DeleteAs a UK citizen living in Southern Austria (Carinthia) , the WizzAir LTN - LJU service has frequently been a real help for myself, family and friends. Not just because of the fares, but that LJU is only 1.5hrs transit time from here. That knocks spots off the 4+hrs from VIE, which is the only year-round scheduled service to Austria from London, or anywhere else in the UK for that matter.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to regional airport utilisation, the Austrian's are still in the dark ages
LGW AND STN are absolute nightmares as airports and could learn a lot from the newly revamped LTN.
Furthermore, in my humble opinion, WizzAir is streets ahead of Easyjet on it's offering to passengers.
OK, so WizzAir is looking at profitability, but surely removing the service altogether and giving carte-blanche to it's competitors on the route is far worse than keeping a foot in the door with just one service per week.
Don't understand why there is no GRZ route from any London airport to serve Styria and Carinthia plus parts of Hungary and Slovenia.
DeleteBlame it on Brexit
DeleteCan you immagine if JP was actually ran like a proper busines and kept its legacy slots at LHR ... my oh my, they could easily operate an A321 on the route.
DeleteWait what? How is that possible, I just booked my flight in December Luton - Ljubljana in December with Wizz few days ago.
ReplyDeleteThey were on sale until a few days ago. You will probably be contacted and refunded or offered an alternative via BUD.
DeleteGreat... I better buy Easy ticket while it's still relatively cheap. This is sad, I loved flying with Wizz.
DeleteThey changed my flight to Prague haha... What a joke.
DeleteOuch and what do they expect you to do from Prague? Catch a train/bus?
DeleteI called them and they offered me to refund the flight and put it on my Wizz Account. Better than nothing, the credit also never expires, so... I guess a fair solution.
Deletewell...there is a RailJet of ČD that runs Praha - Graz .... pretty close. Only need to hitchhike a bit and you are home :D :D
DeletePerhaps I could also write an article about my journey for their Wizz Air Magazine. I bet they would love it.
DeleteI hope when they return to LJU airport they will get higher prices .... LJU should try attract svoboda for St. Peterburg, Volotea or Vueling for Madrid/Barcelona/Lisboa.
ReplyDeleteVery quietly Wizz air will stop flying to Turku from London on 1st October. I understand that the passenger mix was entirely different from those flying on Finnair or BA. Where do these people come from ?
ReplyDelete