Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines and Brussels Airlines have seen a strong start to their newly launched operations to Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport. The Head of Airport Services at operator Fraport Slovenija, Janez Krašnja, said, “Exceptional demand has been recorded during the first few days since the Lufthansa Group launched new flights, which demonstrates the potential of the Slovenian market. Even with the current scheduling, the flights are quite full”. Lufthansa Group’s Senior Sales Manager for Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Peter Pullem, noted, “Ljubljana Airport was cut off from our hubs and many other destinations overnight. Lufthansa Group, a leading European airline group, has recognised the great need for the connectivity of Slovenia, its population and the economy with our flight network, so we searched for capacities in record time and connected Ljubljana Airport with four important European hubs”. The Lufthansa Group member airlines now fly from Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels and Zurich to Ljubljana.
The German national carrier has already made changes to its planned 2020 summer operations to the Slovenian capital with the airline’s evening service from Frankfurt to remain in Ljubljana overnight. Therefore, as of March 29, Lufthansa will offer a more convenient early morning departure to Germany. On the other hand, just days after launching six weekly flights from Brussels, Mr Krašnja said he expects for the Belgian airline to introduce additional frequnecies from next summer, while strong demand and solid advanced bookings would likely result in a more convenient schedule. Finally, Helvetic Airways will be operating the Ljubljana route from Zurich on behalf of Swiss. It will mostly be utilising the new flagship of its fleet, the Embraer E190-E2 aircraft. The jet entered commercial service just six days ago.
Frankfurt, Zurich, Munich and Brussels are among Ljubljana Airport’s eight busiest routes, with Frankfurt ranking second after Istanbul, followed by Zurich, Munich and Brussels as its sixth, seventh and eighth busiest destinations. Last year, Adria Airways carried almost 146.000 passengers to Frankfurt, while some 86.000 flew to Munich. Of those, transfers made up 70% and 80% of all travellers on the two routes respectively. Passengers mostly connected to other European destinations, followed by services to North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America. Adria handled 74.235 travellers on its flights between Ljubljana and Brussels last year, 16% of which continued their journey onwards.
Austrian Airlines remains one of the notable Lufthansa Group members which has not attempted to fill the void left by Adria, however, this is primarily the result of a lack of spare capacity. Ljubljana Airport believes the airline will launch services from Vienna during the summer of 2020. "We are very pleased that, within a month of Adria's bankruptcy, we have succeeded in replacing flights at four out of five Lufthansa Group bases. As a result, we have mostly restored all key destinations from Ljubljana Airport. Of course, the network is not yet complete, but I believe that we will be able to greet another carrier at the start of the summer season”, Mr Krašnja said.
Comments
Switzerland, Germany and Austria to be covered by LH Group, Air France-KLM to take their portion and everything in the direction south east belongs to Air Serbia
It wasn't unusual to see A319 go to VIE or TIA. Do you think it was full?
LX btw as of SUTT 2019 will have evening departure on day 6 ZRH-LJU-ZRH and day 7 morning departure. I guess this is to pick up Transit passengers, especially from KIX NRT LAX SFO and PVG. Those flights leave ZRH around 1315h and return to ZRH next day 1515-1600
interesting to see is also that SN departs from jetbridge stands, where LX and LH are all land stands. (except LX 2276/2277 last Sunday with A320). Hope that they will correct this as especially older or light handicapped do not like CR9 stairs and its funny to see that all airlines incl. JU and YM use jetbridge stands (JU with A319) but the Nr. 1 in Europe not
Apparently, their KLU rotations got a major boost and are full or almost full most of times since JP bancrupty.
OS would only cannibalize their KLU ops if they started LJU.
They will most likely add another KLU rotation or upgrade one or two KLU rotations to E95 (120 seats).
They had even advanced bookings on JP that they took over so nothing has begun from scratch.
In this point u were absolutely right. They flew them for peanuts as they got just proportional fm the ticket paid. So if someone books LJU LAX for 700 USD return, go figure what was left for JP
For LH I'm not sure if their CRJ will park on jet bridges in the future in LJU, because CRJ usually uses bus gates in every airport and Adria's CRJs in LJU were more of an exception in this regard. But when/if LH starts sending their Embraers and Airbuses to LJU those will be parked at the bridge for sure.
That said, we are likely to witness more new arrivals in 2020.
I do think AL will launch VIE-LJU as they are now aggressively penetrating the Eastern European market and expanding like hell in VIE.
I also see the arrival of BT and LO frequency increase.
Good news is that BA will be back next summer - flights already on sale.
W6 already launching 3 weekly CRL-LJU.
Future doesn´t look that gloomy for LJLJ.
So they will happily skip the night's sleep just to catch that midnight Goopti ride to VCE for 50€ with 5 hour window for their 10am Ryanair flight to VLC which was only 39,99€, small hand bag included.
Luckily things are moving in positive direction, with reputable airlines introducting flights to LJU with hopefully more stable operation and what is most important good prices - at least for now. But it will take some time for LJU to regain some faith an trust from the people.
For anyone not believing my words, here is a little chalenge: choose few random dates and few random EU capitals and long haul destinations. Open any flight search engine and search for ticket prices from LJU, VCE, ZAG, VIE, TRS, KLU and report the results.
If you go to KLU and look around parking you won't see much cars with Slovenia reg plates and bus which connect Ljubljana bus/train station with Klagenfurt airport is almost 100% empty and runs few times daily (subsidized). KLU is just opposite of border but still not so close to Ljubljana as you think.
fake argument. if true, lh would do the same at other airports, for example beg, and let ju codeshare and bring feed to fra. but they didn't, lh keeps flying own metal and over the last couple of years increased size from crj/a319 to a320/321. from muc they added frequency and increased size. so no, lh would much rather keep control and own their feeder lines.
Let's face it. Nothing happened. LH sent a shi**y CRJ (one per day) to replace Adria's three daily flights. Same with Swiss and Brussels, nothing to see there. People are just overexcited, because they're happy that Adria is out of business and LJU is not a god forsaken s*ithole (which it actually is).
Wait until next year before opening the champagne. If we don't have the same (or better) connectivity as with Adria, we lost a lot.
For some of the people here it still would have been worth it to avoid those horrible LCCs.
One day, it was cheaper for LH to let JP fly unprofitable routes to LJU. Next day these are the routes that were profitable and should be established ASAP under Air Slovenia.
Bring back the Balkan bus tour, we don't want LH.
Have you actually been flying? With a real need and schedule to be in a meeting on which your business depends on? Of course not!
If you were actually flying, you would realise what is expected from a reliable and safe airline.
Cancelled or rerouted and merged flights, replacements with shitty and unsafe carpatair, rookie pilots not able to land, never knowing if you make a meeting, missing a night with your family etc... And remember its its a price of 500eur and more for 1-2 hr flight. We really lost a lot! I am not happy to loose Adria but it was the only way to get long term improvement. We suffer for half a year but then travel gets better again.
So we have a great case of couch airline CEO again. Just what this forum needs.
Now with arrival of new players I think LJU might gain a lot both from reliability standpoint as well as price wise. And that is a good start to regain people's faith and to get more of them flying from LJU.
As far as LCCs are concerned they are not horrible and are very welcome in LJU (also all of them doing great in LJU), but I know people from Ljubljana who even fly to London from Venice. How this can be a viable choice with all the cheap options from LJU is unknown to me. It is probably just an extreme example of what I was talking about.
I'm sure you'll catch a lot of meetings with the current schedule. And don't forget. In order to get those early morning departures Adria had, LH, OS, LX would have to base an aircraft overnight in LJU. Not going to happen.
And stop whining about 500 euro tickets. Sure it was, if you bought them one day in advance or if you booked your direct LJU-MUC flight through Kinshasa. Stupid Adria's passengers would go onto their website, type in the destination and then start screaming when they saw a 1000 euro flight. Of course, it was not a direct flight, but who cares, right?
Yes, with me as a CEO, Adria would have never gone bust.
And the link below - this was never the case before. Period.
https://izletnadlani.com/ugodno-iz-ljubljane-v-zda-povratne-letalske-karte-iz-ljubljane-v-miami-new-york-la-ze-od-415-eur-check-in-prtljaga-je-vkljucena/
See, this is where pure ignorance Adria style kicks in.
LH will do early morning departure LJU-FRA as of SUTT 2020 by having the aircraft not based in LJU, but just spend the night parked in LJU. Like they (and every single other airline that does hub model) do in a lot of other airports.
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2019/11/swiss-to-end-zagreb-and-sarajevo-flights.html
welcome to the reality
With comments from Slovenian businessmen: "I've been avoiding Adria for almost a year." "I have never flown from Ljubljana." "There was no catastrophe after the bankruptcy of Adria regarding connectivity." Even Slovenian MEPs in the European Parliament don't have to much troubles: "My experience with new connections from Jože Pučnik Airport is good."