American Airlines has cut its international summer schedule by 60% to match a sharp drop in demand due to the coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak. The carrier’s seasonal service between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik, which was to run between June and October on a daily basis, has been suspended for the entire summer season. “Nobody is booking travel”, Vasu Raja, American’s Senior Vice President for Network Strategy said. “If we can reduce our capacity this summer, we can reduce our expenses”, he added. In total, American is suspending 25 summer seasonal flights until 2021. It will focus on services into London Heathrow and Madrid, where passengers can connect to flights on its partners British Airways and Iberia, respectively.
Dubrovnik Airport is facing a watershed summer, with airlines cancelling all flights to the coastal city in April, with the majority of services unlikely to resume through May either. Carriers which were to launch new seasonal flights to Dubrovnik this summer, including airBaltic from Vilnius and Qatar Airways from Doha, have cancelled their planned services and postponed them for 2021. Dubrovnik Airport closed its doors for commercial flights on March 19 after several staff members tested positive for the virus. During the month, the airport handled 19.480 passengers, down 66.3% on 2019. Over the first quarter, the airport welcomed 72.406 travellers, down 38.6%.
| Month | PAX | Change (%) |
|---|---|---|
| JAN | 19.338 | ▼ 26.5 |
| FEB | 33.588 | ▼ 0.5 |
| MAR | 19.480 | ▼ 66.3 |
American Airlines’ service between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik proved to be extremely successful during its launch year in 2019. The carrier maintained three weekly services from June until late August and increased frequencies to four weekly during its last month of operation in September. It handled 17.782 passengers during its four-month service run, with an average cabin load factor of 83%.
Expected
ReplyDelete:(
ReplyDeleteLeisure airports which rely on seasonal traffic will particularly struggle this year.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate
ReplyDeleteA bit extreme to cancel for the entire season.
ReplyDeletedid you book your flight yet?
DeleteJust the first of many to come :-(
ReplyDeleteTrue. It says in the text that Qatar and Air Baltic have already cancelled their new routes to DBV.
DeleteI think BT will struggle in the coming months. I think they will shrink a lot.
DeleteAs already predicted on here.
ReplyDeleteVery difficult times for DBV and City of Dubrovnik ahead :(
ReplyDeleteAmerican is retiring all B767s, 757s and A330s. So from next year I expect the B787 on this route.
ReplyDeleteWe will see if it returns next year either considering the upcoming economic crash.
DeleteShocking how things have changed so quickly.
ReplyDeleteIt seems there won't be a 'tourist season' this year after all.
ReplyDeleteHow many passengers would Croatia have without toursists? Anybody know?
Around 4.5
DeleteIf ZAG management wasn't incompetent and greedy then it would be comfortably over 5 million.
DeleteThere might be a wave of tourists from Serbia that would come by car. If they would be welcome that is.
DeleteJust showing that Croatia will have big economic problems.
ReplyDeleteOf course other countries will have them as well but this crisis will affect the most the countries that had big income from tourism
Don't forget the earthquake in Zagreb, government will have to spend millions there as well. I'm more afraid of what will come after the virus.
DeleteHow bad was the earthquake, are many buildings affected? I saw pics of some old buildings in the city center but did not have the impression that there were that many damaged houses?
DeleteBut yes, I hope people at the coast have some savings from previous years. It will be a very hard year for them.
Most of them were buildings of historic importance so their reconstruction has to be authentic. It will require a lot of skill and money to bring back those beautiful queens.
DeleteWhy did Dubrovnik have such a big decline in January?
ReplyDeleteIberia and LOT did not have flights unlike last winter.
DeleteSo sad to see those planes parked on the runway.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI can only imagine how bad advance bookings were. Hope they come back next year but I think it would be extremely optimistic of me to hope that. I think 2020 will be a worse year for Croatia than all of the economic crisis. Then we had a drop in tourism, now tourism will crash completely.
ReplyDeleteThis is depressing... And don't mean about DBV, Croatia or Balkan... This is turning into a major s**tshow globaly.. And we all fell for this epidemic that is no more or less what we see every season.... :(
ReplyDeleteSo true
DeleteWrong! This is not a regular flu. Hospitals cannot deal with the current number of patients and if you stop confinement, the numbers would explode even more. I hope there are no old or physically frail people in your family. Anyway, back to the topic, yes, I expected this flight not to operate this summer...Even next year, the "sezona" will be poor because a lot of people will have lost their jobs all over the world and will have less money to spend.
DeleteIf I am not wrong JU is introducing a morning flight to DBV wich will connect to JFK in both directions. That's something at least.
ReplyDeleteThe situation is expected to worsen in the US during the upcoming weeks especially the East Coast.
DeleteMost airlines flying to NYC in particular will be affected including JU.
Croatia will heavily suffer from this Corona crise as huge yearly income comes from tourism.
ReplyDeleteTalking about billions USD
Unfortunately this is just the beginning, more is to come in the next weeks especially as virus remains uncontained. May God help us all.
ReplyDeleteIn June Lufthansa has revised FRA-ZAG, two daily are the same but capacity was reduced from A320/321 to CRJ-900.
DeleteOS is also reducing ZAG to 18 weekly.
DeleteSpeaking with my colleagues, the crisis is hitting particularly bad some parts of Serbia as well as Macedonia.
ReplyDeleteSometimes a crisis resets a countries mindset.
In the case of Croatia, in my opinion this Corona virus is a huge blessing for Croatia, it will recycle the country from its dependence on tourism, and set forth a change fron its “easy money” economy, thay geneates over 10 billion euros in 4 months.
Tourism will come back to Croatia no doubt (like it did Greece after their strikes in 2015/2016, Egypt etc...) but surely the Croatians will enveloped newer forward thinking mindsets that will de clutch themselves from their dependent on tourism.
As for Airports and Airlines, ouch, the whole Balkans without exeptions will be awash in 2020.
I don't see this crisis being a blessing for Croatia, or any country, especially for the innocent victims. As far as tourism goes it will return to 'normal' in how every many years it takes. No change in mind set will take place. Everyone will readily grab the easy buck.
Deleteanon 17:27, somethings very wrong with your assumption, it cannot ever go back to how it was, its againts the human psyche. Croatians will change, and so will there economy, never has a crisis happened and not change a person or a nationa behaviour for that matter. Therefore, once again this crisis will be a blessing in disguise for Croats, as well as others.
DeleteYou are assuming that it will change for the better.
Deletelike obviously!? Croatia, that is all the so called eastern block countries have evolved ten fold since the fall of the evil curtain, so if Croatia slips backwards so will your country as well
DeleteAnd what is my country?
DeleteAnd what if governments use the this crisis to become more authoritarian, like Hungary for example? Nothing really seems obvious to me right now.
Croatia can't just change overnight and it can't develop a different industry. Wanna know why? We don't have our banks!!! Foreigners don't care and are not willing to give good loans to support the development of local industry. Because of that nothing will change. Some Croatian companies might go bankrupt and in stead of saving them our smart government will give subsidies for foreigners to come and do it in stead of us.
DeleteThe 'evil' curtain has built 80% of everything that is of any value in Croatia today.
DeleteOne of the best routes in ex-Yu. Shame
ReplyDeleteTrue dat, very cool route.
DeleteThe cancellation of AA Dubrovnik service is just a drop of water during the monsoon season. There is a pretty good chance that both European and US tourism will remain virtually non-existant in the summer months to come. Airlines will shrink, beg for subsidies or die.
ReplyDeleteDear friends, we are all in a "Brace! Brace! Brace!" position, there are just no flight attendants arround to scream. In all industries, not just tourism/airline.
Stay safe and healthy.
Regards, from Novi Sad, Serbia.
Eight
Truth be told me don't need stewardesses to scream it, we need good pilots who will make the impact as soft as humanely possible.
DeleteUnfortunately, we made sure in past years to appoint most incompetent pilots (some even without flight school) to pilot our planes :(
Delete