Airlines and airports shift to winter operations

The 2019/20 winter season begins today and will run until March 29 of next year, signalling changes for both the national carriers of the former Yugoslavia, as well as airports across the region.

Ljubljana Airport has lost its main customer and is expected to experience an almost 40% reduction in capacity this winter. Despite this, it will see several new arrivals. Today, Lufthansa will launch operations to the Slovenian capital from Frankfurt, which will be followed by Munich next week. It will be joined by its partner Brussels Airlines, which will inaugurate flights from its Belgian hub on November 4. Furthermore, low cost carrier Wizz Air, which was to discontinue services from Charleroi to Ljubljana over the winter months now plans to resume operations on the route on December 19. Almost all airlines currently serving the Slovenian capital are increasing their operations to the city this winter season, including Aeroflot, Air France, Air Serbia, LOT Polish Airlines and Montenegro Airlines.

European scheduled capacity growth W2019/20 - top 15

Market	Growth (%)
Montenegro	28.1
Albania	22.0
Macedonia	18.0
Bulgaria	17.9
Cyprus	17.8
Bosnia and Herzegovina	16.8
Hungary	16.3
Malta	16.0
Serbia	14.0
Poland	12.8
Greece	12.3
Turkey	12.3
Ukraine	11.5
Moldova	11.5
Luxembourg	10.3

Air Serbia will increase frequencies on a number of its routes this winter from Belgrade, including Banja Luka, Bucharest, Larnaca, Ljubljana, Podgorica, Skopje, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki, Tirana and Venice. In addition, it will maintain all its new year-round services inaugurated over the summer from the Serbian capital, among which are Barcelona, Cairo, Helsinki, Kiev, Krasnodar, Madrid and Rijeka. For the first time during the winter, the airline will operate from two bases, in Belgrade and Niš, with ten routes to be maintained from the latter. Overall, Air Serbia will operate 532 weekly services, an increase of 102 flights or 24% more than the same period last year. In the busier months of December and January, this figure will grow to 596 flights, or almost 18% more than in 2018/19. Niš Airport itself will also see two new routes inaugurated by Ryanair this winter – to Malta and Hahn, however, Swiss International Air Lines will suspend flights for most of the season. Kraljevo’s Morava Airport will mark its maiden commercial operations this winter with subsidised services to Vienna, which are to launch in December.

Croatia Airlines will make minor changes to its winter operations. The carrier will add an additional weekly flight from Zagreb to Brussels and has partially upgraded its seasonal Dublin service, which will run until January 26, 2020. Furthermore, at Zagreb Airport, Greece's Aegean will add an extra weekly flight on its service from Athens for a total of three. The new rotation will operate on and off throughout the winter, until January 15, before it goes on a month-long hiatus, and resumes on February 24. British Airways will add an extra two weekly flights between London Heathrow and the Croatian capital for a total of nine for most of the winter. However, during certain periods, frequencies will vary between seven and nine weekly. Spain's Iberia will introduce an extra weekly rotation from Madrid for a total of three per week. On the other hand, Korean Air will suspend its operations from Seoul for the winter starting November 29, while Flydubai will operate three weekly flights less. Elsewhere in Croatia, Freebird Airlines will replace Aegean Airlines on winter charters from Dubrovnik Airport. The Turkish carrier will run two charters per day from Dubrovnik, a significant increase from last year, and will operate to numerous points across Europe.

Montenegro Airlines will be making minor amendments to its 2019/2020 winter season operations by adding an additional two weekly flights to Ljubljana. At Skopje Airport, Wizz Air has upgraded all its seasonal flights to a year-round basis. Last year, the airline downgraded its operations from Skopje to Barcelona and Vaxjo, as well as from Ohrid to London Luton, to seasonal summer flights. However, this winter, Wizz will maintain services on all three routes twice per week. In addition, it will continue to run all new routes launched from the two cities over the past few months. Pristina Airport will see both Eurowings and Wizz Air introduce services to Vienna this winter. Furthermore, Bulgarian charter carrier Alk Airlines will start regular flights from Pristina to Dusseldorf and Munich at the end of December on behalf of a local tour operator.

Sarajevo Airport is gearing up for a strong winter with FlyBosnia to maintain services to London Luton and Rome, with the latter to be inaugurated next Saturday. In addition, Eurowings will maintain its new service from Berlin, which was launched this summer, while Turkish Airlines will boost frequencies from Istanbul from eleven to fourteen per week.

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