Bad news for LJU just keeps on rolling

What a shame and a real blow for LJU this winter.

If there route was second best performing on London market why the suspension? Even if seasonal.

Wizz 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.

Basically LJU is left with 2 LCCs – easyjet and Transavia.

Well done Fraport.

Maybe time for Adria to return to London?

Because they can probably utilise the aircraft on other routes where they can make more money.

lol, good one

Bari is also becoming seasonal

So easyjet will be only airline with flights to London. Shame BA didn't extend their season.

The time for Adria is running out in every sense of the word.

Stop extending Adria's life by forgetting debts and start attracting more airlines.

Well I see this more as a fail on Wizz Air's behalf than Ljubljana's.

They 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.

They 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.

How could this affect LJU this winter? Losing two rows with relatively good LF is ideal.

Seems 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.

How? LJU loses to key routes and Wizz opens another 5 from London.

Brexit?

What I doubt get is that they planned to increase capacity to A321 and now they completely cancel flights.

Luton and Charleroi key routes?

No.

They planned to use A321 last winter between London and Ljubljana as well but in the end they shelved that and used A320 instead.

Well now you have the overpriced Adria which is paid to fly to Brussels. Enjoy... if your flight is not cancelled.

Easyjet offers a much better product and STN/LGW offer quicker and easier transit to London.

+1

Hahaha, 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.

They are still no. 1 airline in Macedonia and Bosnia a d number 2 in Serbia.

Yes but their prices will probably go up now.

Flixbus is faster than Adria on some routes already with all the cancellations and triangle routes.

This was an opportunity for British Airways to keep flights from Heathrow over winter.

True

What could be the reason?

Yes

* routes, typo

Does anyone know how they performed this summer?

:(

Perhaps an opportunity for Ryanair to finally enter the market.

Air France is almost doubling flights this winter so they will be fine.

I 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

Prices need to go up. People need to be prepared to pay more to fly. Artificially low fares are damaging the aviation industry.

With LJU's pricing I doubt it unless they give them some deal to fly for free.

There won't be any Brexit, so don't worry about that!

The 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.

Haha. 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.

Why 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?

Anon 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.

They had 1.467 passengers in July.

To 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.

And now compare LTN's and STN's train station and you will see the difference.

In 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.

Not enough demand.

If even Wizz Air cannot maintain 3pw flights to LON, then you can forget about sustainable flights to anywhere else in the UK.

For 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.".
Apparently 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.

BUD 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.

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.

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.

So it is impossible to estimate demand between say Ljubljana and Bagdad, because there are no flights to measure it?

I 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.

I 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.

+100 last anon

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...

JP must immediately launch Heathrow flights¡

Number 2. in Serbia after a 500% gap behind JU.

As 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.
When 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.

Wizz recently confirmed that their Vienna ops were already highly profitable after the first year there. Not just profitable but highly profitable.

Don't understand why there is no GRZ route from any London airport to serve Styria and Carinthia plus parts of Hungary and Slovenia.

Blame it on Brexit

Riiiiiiight, 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.

Stop spreading lies. They are introducing 13 new routes and cutting 2.

Can 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.

They 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.

Since 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!

Wait what? How is that possible, I just booked my flight in December Luton - Ljubljana in December with Wizz few days ago.

They were on sale until a few days ago. You will probably be contacted and refunded or offered an alternative via BUD.

Great... I better buy Easy ticket while it's still relatively cheap. This is sad, I loved flying with Wizz.

They changed my flight to Prague haha... What a joke.

Ouch and what do they expect you to do from Prague? Catch a train/bus?

I 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.

well...there is a RailJet of ČD that runs Praha - Graz .... pretty close. Only need to hitchhike a bit and you are home :D :D

adria 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.

But 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.

Perhaps I could also write an article about my journey for their Wizz Air Magazine. I bet they would love it.

I 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.

Very 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 ?