NEWS FLASH
Croatia's two busiest airports recorded mixed results in July. Zagreb Airport welcomed 366.242 passengers during the month, representing a decrease of 3.4% compared to last year. The number of aircraft movements stood at 4.356, down 2.4%. Overall, during the January - July period, Zagreb Airport handled 1.900.347 travellers through its doors, up 2.7%. It has added an extra 49.411 passengers year-on-year.
| Month | PAX | Change (%) |
|---|
| JAN | 191.197 | 0 |
| FEB | 181.154 | ▲ 6.2 |
| MAR | 232.978 | ▲ 4.2 |
| APR | 280.790 | ▲ 10.6 |
| MAY | 311.368 | ▲ 3.6 |
| JUN | 336.618 | ▲ 1.5 |
| JUL | 366.242 | ▼ 3.4 |
Split Airport, which recently opened its new terminal building, registered its busiest month on record. It handled 723.048 travellers in July, an increase of 4%. Over the first seven months of the year, the airport welcomed 1.825.166, an improvement of 6.4%. It added 109.029 passenger on 2018.
| Month | PAX | Change (%) |
|---|
| JAN | 36.360 | ▲ 6.9 |
| FEB | 34.825 | ▲ 13.7 |
| MAR | 50.037 | ▼ 5.9 |
| APR | 151.381 | ▲ 25.8 |
| MAY | 310.809 | ▲ 2.2 |
| JUN | 513.706 | ▲ 8.2 |
| JUL | 723.048 | ▲ 4.0 |
Sorry but ZAG is pathetic.
ReplyDeleteGovernment should react and force ZAG operator to do something regarding traffic. Their taxes are way tooooo much and they don't want new airlines in. Such a shame, there was a good chance to make ZAG as a real weekend destination, but that would obliviously not happen. This is what happen when you give all to Turkish company and leave them without any supervision.
ReplyDeletebefore blaming TAV you shoud blame local gov. I dont think that for example TBS are unhappy with TAV.
DeleteThis is what happens when you give airport for concession. It could have stayed public. Same in Belgrade. Public airport could have political steering and be opened for LCCs allowing citizens cheap travel.
DeleteTAV doesn't run the airport. It is a consortium where TAV has 15% shares. The consortium runs the airport.
DeleteWhat happened to ZAG?!?!
ReplyDeleteLast year they had lots of World Cup charters and this year they had no new routes or frequency increases, so their scheduled growth was not enough to cover for last year's charter traffic.
DeleteZAG needs new routes, LOT ended up not announcing ZAG-BUD, no Sofia flights, no LCCs, Tokyo flights didn't materialise as the government is very slow with negotiating an agreement with Japan, China rumours have all but died out. Any one of these facts on its own are nothing alarming, together they are quite alarming. The growth can't rely on charter traffic and one-time events such as Croatian EU presidency.
World Cup charters are not a good excuse because LJU, BEG and SKP had such flights in the past but still had growth next year.
DeleteWhat do you mean by no Sofia flights? Was someone supposed to operate those?
Delete32,000 Croats visited Bulgaria in 2018
DeleteSadly, only 3300 Bulgarians visited Croatia. Numbers are catastrophic :(
Figures are according to Eurostat and Bulgarian National Institute.
i wouldnt call SPU's 4% soaring but 723k is indeed a bril result
ReplyDeleteI think the soar part was referring to the total figure which is very impressive for any ex-Yu airport.
DeleteAll airports except BEG which has many months with 500.000+ numbers a month.
Deleteim surprised about ZAG's big seasonality, thats almost 100% between jan and Jul.
ReplyDeletethat is always taken in account for airlines when planning new flights. i dont believe other (exyu airports) are doing much better
Coastal airports have extreme seasonality, SPU numbers for Jul compared to Feb are 20:1
DeleteCould Banja Luka and Tuzla have at least a little impact on this minus? A lot of Bosnians I know who were using ZG before now use BL and TZ, especially on the Scandinavia routes.
ReplyDeleteBNX most definitely did as Serbs from northern Srpska no longer have to travel from ZAG to fly since many destinations are now offered from BNX...and they are probably much cheaper as well.
DeleteThat too, but I think most of the customers on BNX, at least for the Scandinavian route are Bosniaks from entire Krajina who live in Sweden. At least if you look at that news clip when Ryanair started, it was mostly Bosniaks from Sanski Most, Prijedor and Banja Luka.
DeleteDo you mean Bosniaks or Bosnians because there is a difference. I don't think many from the Federation would travel to Banja Luka as for them SJJ or Croatian coastal airports are closer and generally the road network is horrible and takes forever to drive 100 km. Serbs from Srpska would fly from either BNX or TZL as those are the closest and cheapest for them. ZAG is the next option and then BEG. SJJ tends to be extremely expensive due to little competition and high airport charges.
DeleteHowever ZAG until recently had a lot of passengers from northern Srpska and TZL and BNX are becoming fierce competitors. I think TZL killed any chances of OSI becoming a relevant player.
I meant Bosniaks (not Bosnians), from Bosnian Krajina, i.e Sanski Most, Prijedor, Kljuc, Banja Luka, Novi, Gradiska, and they all fly from BNX now :)
DeleteHmm but the real question is how big of a group they are? What are the most popular destinations for them? I know there are a lot of Bosnian Muslims in Sweden so maybe BNX-NYO is interesting for them?
DeleteI think quite big, again if you look at that video from Alternativna televizija, you will see that most of the passengers are Bosnian Muslims, and only few Bosnian Orthodox. And those are the people who were mostly using Zagreb as well prior to BNX and TZL launched their flights.
DeleteInteresting, I'll try to find the link and watch it. So what are the destinations that are the most useful for them?
DeleteDon't know if it has something to do with FR and BNX, but in Q4 2018 when FR launched CRL-BNX, ZAG-BRU lost some 500 passengers that quarter.
DeleteDidn't Transat add more flights this year?
ReplyDeleteYes it added one extra weekly flight and this year we also have Korean which started flying last September.
DeleteSo that's three extra widebody flights. Means someone performed really badly. Who could it be?
DeleteIt doesn't mean someone performed badly. It means there were no charters to Russia and fewer transfer passengers because of more nonstop flights to the coast. Don't underestimate AA's flights to Dubrovnik and the number of passengers that will take away.
DeleteDoubt AA to DBV affected ZAG. It would have happened if ZAG had direct flights to the US which it doesn't. Americans going to DBV were transferring in other European hubs.
DeleteAs for charters last year, like someone mentioned SKP, LJU and BEG all had major events and charter flights but they grew next year. ZAG should be the same but it isn't. Why did LJU compensate Eurobasket finals but ZAG didn't?
It compensated because there were an additional 9 routes operated by Adria at the time which didn't exist the year before.
DeleteBtw I'm not justifying the decline by only Russian charters but it certainly is one of the factors.
DeleteBut that's the thing, why didn't ZAG get so many new routes? They are not doing much .
DeleteWell I will remind you that all but one of the routes Adria launched failed. Zagreb got several new routes each year since the concession. Last year 4 new routes one of which is intercontinental. You have to consolidate at one point.
Delete* Sorry two of which were intercontinental - AC Rouge and Korean Air.
DeleteOU IS the problem here, they are dragging ZAG down.
DeleteI hope we don't experience the same in winter.
DeleteThere are rumours EK might discontinue Zagreb.
DeleteDoubt it, they might reduce it but doubt they would just cut it.
DeleteIn that case they would most likely switch with FlyDubai.
DeleteThey had a try at that.
DeleteThe worst part is that not only did they switch to FZ in winter but they already downgraded it.
DeleteHow come they couldnt compensate 12 Rossiya B777-300 + numerous 738 and those Russian charters flown by Uzbekistan 767 and TK 340 ? I mean Croatia was in the finals, doubt those flights were full last year.
DeleteRemember how many extra flights SKP had or all the B77W by TK that flew between LJU and IST or all the widebodies that were specially chartered to Belgrade for the event? So ZAG should have compensated like all those airports did as well. If the three also had a slump then ok, ZAG could justify it as well. Not like this.
DeleteNo, they are just finding excuses for bad performance of ZAG over-and over again. Let's waite for LJU performance in July... (together with JP collapsing)...
DeleteCongrats, SPU! Congrats, DBV!
ReplyDeleteImpressive!
This is a catastrophic result for ZAG considering that this should be top performing month for the airport and all the money invested in the infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteActually that's August so this is no big deal, falls happen to everyone.
DeleteJuly is not a big deal? Haha!
DeleteAnon@8.56 - ZAG troll farm at work. Let's afree. July is not important ...
DeleteI didn't mean it like that but August is the primary month when it comes to growth.
DeleteThis is really poor show for Zagreb. Pax grow is definitely not of interest for mngmt/Cro gov at the moment. Maybe it is to blame Cro gov who is trying to save OU or MZLZ who does not want to start new investment cycle. Or both, for reasons they want to hide. City of Zagreb and the whole area have lots to offeer and 2-3 LCCs would develop it into real tourist destination year around (Zagreb is a tourist friendly city in every sense except for affordable LCCs connections).
ReplyDeleteZAG is nowhere close a new expansion cycle, there are parts of the day when the airport is a ghost town. LCCs could be encouraged to fly during those hours to fill the gaps.
DeleteWhy would anyone travel over Zagreb when they can go directly to Split or Dubrovnik? If there wasn't for government protection of Zagreb Airport and if Split got some government support like for acquiring properties for runway and taxiway expansion, SPU would have been no1 for a long time already.
ReplyDelete