Europe's busiest airline, Ryanair, is to continue expanding in the former Yugoslavia in the coming months, both independently and through its subsidiaries. With a handful of new routes already announced, more are set to follow, in particular to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The budget airline will operate a new service from Vienna to Banja Luka next year on behalf of its subsidiary Lauda and is also tipped to announce another new route within the coming days. “The service from Vienna won’t be seasonal but it won’t operate on a year-round basis either. Within the next seven to ten days we expect for an additional new route to be announced. At this point, I can’t unveil the destination in question, other than it being within the European Union”, the head of operator Airports of Republic of Srpska, Milan Račić, said. For its part, Ryanair noted, “We will continue developing our operations at Banja Luka and we look forward to opening additional services in the future and attributing to passenger growth”. The airline is also expected to finalise its agreement with Mostar Airport over launching services to the city but has not commented on the matter so far.
Ryanair has significantly grown its operations to Croatia this year, primarily through Zadar, and plans to continue expanding. The low cost airline handled some 550.000 passengers on its flights to and from the country this year. Out of the eight new routes launched to Zadar last summer season, all are expected to resume in 2020 with exception to Hamburg. Furthermore, the airline will commence a one weekly flight from Hahn to Rijeka on April 4. In addition, Lauda will introduce services from Vienna to both Zadar and Dubrovnik. Ryanair commenced operations to Dubrovnik this year with flights from Dublin. The company itself noted, "Ryanair has held positive discussions with the Croatian Minister for Tourism regarding longer term traffic growth and route development at its existing Croatian airports as well as potential new airports".
New EX-YU Ryanair / Lauda flights scheduled so far
| Route | Launch date |
|---|---|
| Malta - Niš | NOV 08 |
| Vienna - Dubrovnik | MAR 29 |
| Vienna - Zadar | MAR 30 |
| Dublin - Podgorica | APR 02 |
| Vienna - Banja Luka | APR 03 |
| Hahn - Rijeka | APR 04 |
Click on link for further details
In Serbia, Ryanair, will expand its operations to Niš Constantine the Great Airport this winter season with the introduction of flights from Malta in November, which will be followed up by a new service from Hahn in January. It will compete directly against Air Serbia on its new route from Germany. On the other hand, the carrier has scheduled flights from Stockholm Skavsta to Niš only until the end of the 2019/20 winter season, in late March, indicating the route may be discontinued.
Ryanair has become the third largest in terms of offered capacity in Montenegro behind only the national carrier and Air Serbia. The low cost airline has overtaken Turkish Airlines and plans to handle over 175.000 passengers on its flights to and from Podgorica this year, up from 150.000 in 2018. For next year, the airline has announced it will launch services from Dublin, making it its eighth route to the Montenegrin capital. As a result, Ryanair becomes the first airline to link Ireland and Montenegro with a scheduled air service.
In Slovenia, a market which was once served by Ryanair, the carrier is believed to have approached Ljubljana Airport over potential flights following the collapse of Adria Airways. The low cost carrier previously criticised the Slovenian government for selling Ljubljana Airport to Germany's Fraport, which it has accused of creating an airport monopoly throughout Europe. However, last year the airline began operations from Frankfurt's main airport which is operated by Fraport. Slovenia is currently the only European Union member state which is not served by Ryanair.
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Бар између априла и краја октобра. Или ће Морава бити
под монополом Ер Србије. Ипак у овом времену то није могуће. Јер војна писта је преслаба да прима авионе теже од
50 тона. У року две ипо године, по изградњи паралелне, цивилне писте, биће реално слетање свих комерцијалних авиона до изнад 200 путника. Наравно и карго авиона...
До тада ваља радити на тржишту и даљем обучавању
земаљске оперативне службе. И припремити тај Краљевачки аеродром за само одрживи саобраћај у центру Србије.
Другог лека нема. Оправка и преправка војне писте је неисплатива. А за војно ваздухопловство довољна и независна од цивилног саобраћаја. Који је посебно
захтеван. Растом привреде Србије ни аеродроми немогуће
се смањивати. Насупрот. Као и ауто - путеви. Србија неможе бити ван света. И није. Што је разлог напора да се потпуно
држава потпуно преобрази и промени. Има доста људи који
на томе раде. Има и оних који одпомажу.
Надајмо се у оне који практично мењају начин рада и живљења... ✈🌐✈
Rodney Marinkovic, Sydney.✈
You made my day, thanks :D
For Croatian government best would be to just shut it down. With manufacturing in continental Croatia dying out I doubt there will any need for cargo flights in the future.
"The budget airline briefly maintained flights between London Stansted and Maribor in 2007 and 2008. Despite solid loads, the route was terminated after the budget airline hiked prices for a joint advertising program, which was turned down by local authorities."
It's like building new roads. In the beginning they are deemed unnecessary then traffic comes.
Interesting fact is that FR are actually pulling out of BUD in favour of the new Polish Ryanair subdivision - Buzz.
My thought is that the Croatian coast and ME one will definitely benefit from Buzz and expect more Hungarian and Polish tourists in summer.
I heard that Buzz will expand to Europe´s coastal cities, Egypt, Jordan too.
And talking about SKP's succes story, yes at the moments it seems like a great succes, but SKP and basically all country is getting more and more dependend on the sole airline, which is an LCC and is foreign - that means you have no control over it, except for subsidies and incentives. And when they decide to shift their strategy or maybe favourable economic situation comes to and end all that kind of airports could be in big trouble overnight. And even today, with all that traffic SKP has one of the lowest connectivity indexes in Europe.
1. secondary cities airports with no other traffic and local communities being prepared to give them money in return for some traffic and tourists. All that combined can have positive effects on the whole region without any major risks
2. Big, major airports for which Ryanair represents only small market share and can be a good addition to other traffic. Also at these airports Ryanair is not able to set their own rules.
For majority of other airports, going to bed with Ryanair as someone else mentioned, could be very risky. They are powerful enough and will probably scare away other airlines and then start to demand. And, except for some cheap holiday options, there is not really much benefit neither for business nor other passengers and also connectivity.
On the other hand, what is true is that LJU management didn't entertain LCCs and now they find themselves losing traffic to surrounding airports. Not suggesting they should have turned it into low cost hub but it was a short sighted decision that has led to a tragic loss of passenger traffic with Adria now gone.
Can't see any LCC basing 2 or 3 aircraft in INI.
GoOpti would disagree.
Current solution offers much more than any other would have. I offered a number, 1/4, since I have looked at the economics, and haven't ignored the fact that there's already Turkish, Austrian, Croatia and Air Serbia offering one-stop connections to Europe and whatever Turkish' network offers. So incremental connectivity of any single double daily is an order of magnitude worse in comparison to Wizz Air's current network and pax #.
You might have had an argument if there was a high unserved potential in SKP, but there isn't. Propensity to travel is already the highest in the region (excluding coastal tourist regions) if you look at population figures and take into account true traffic.