The European Commission has approved a five million euro Slovenian scheme to support airlines flying to the country. The support, which will take the form of direct grants, is accessible to all carriers operating to or from Slovenia. The level of support per beneficiary will depend on the number of passengers carried by the airline and the number of flights. The measure is expected to benefit approximately twenty carriers. The objective of the measure is to re-establish air connectivity to and from Slovenia, with a view to support the recovery of tourism and more broadly of the economy which have been negatively affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
The Commission found that the Slovenian scheme is in line with the conditions set out in the temporary framework to support the economy in the context of the coronavirus outbreak. The Commission concluded that the measure is necessary, appropriate and proportionate to remedy “a serious disturbance in the economy of a member state”. An expert commission formed by the Slovenian Ministry for Economic Development and Technology is set to decide on Monday, November 23, which airlines will be the beneficiaries of an initial 1.5 million euros in subsidies for maintaining flights to the country between March 30, 2020 and September 30, 2020. Nine airlines have applied, including Lufthansa, Air Serbia, Montenegro Airlines, Air France, Turkish Airlines, Swiss, easyJet, Wizz Air and LOT Polish Airlines.
In order to be eligible for aid, airlines must either demonstrate that they have operated scheduled flights to Slovenian airports from March 1, 2020 to September 30, 2020 or that they will commit through contracts to operate scheduled flights at a specific frequency from October 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021. Financial institutions are explicitly excluded as beneficiaries. The aid will not be channelled through credit institutions or other financial institutions but will be paid directly to the beneficiary airlines.
No surprise. It's EU airlines that will benefit the most.
ReplyDeleteHm, EU funds going to EU member states and EU firms.
DeleteWhat else did you expect?
Expected
DeleteJustice ?
DeleteUnbeliveble! Majority of carriers in LJU are EU carriers and they will get majority of funds!!! Who made this hilarious tender!?!? How dare they.
DeleteWhy not? The money originated from the EU anyway.
DeleteThe real question is will the EU approve a new national airline for Slovenia
ReplyDeleteAnd when is a decision on that supposed to be made?
DeleteCountries have to submit by next April what they will do with the corona fund. The Slovenian government said they would submit their proposal by the end of the year. Then the EU has to approve it.
DeleteSo it's not going to be a quick process?
DeleteWell it will take some time for the plan to be approved.
DeleteIf the government is confident they will get the green light for the airline, they can already begin preparations.
DeleteThen they don't seem confident
DeleteI don't get this payment calculation at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's all explained in the example
DeleteDidn't someone write just the other day that the EU will never approve this??
ReplyDeleteThere was never doubt this would get approved.
Delete+ it's just 5 million.
DeleteGood let's hope it helps.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will do much to be honest but let's see.
DeleteFantastic
ReplyDeleteThey should have given more money
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think the total amount is still very small.
DeleteIf that money went to Adria, people would be whining about their money being spent on nieces and nephews.
DeleteNow, nobody's complaining. Go figure.
Why should we give more to foreigners when we could have our own airline?
DeleteWould it sit well with you if that money went to a new national carrier or Adria?
Delete@Anonymous09:12:
DeleteI love your attitude. Hope it won't change if government sets up a new national carrier.
Much more is prepared for Air Slovenia..
Delete@Anonymous 09:54:
DeletePerfect!
Well anything that helps. There are barely 2 flights per day from LJU. Today just JU from Belgrade and LH from Frankfurt.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteThere are some days with no flights.
DeletePoznan has about twice the population of Ljubljana, and they are left just with a single daily flight to WAW.
DeleteSituation in aviation is bad all around Europe, not just in LJU.
And how many legacy carriers did POZ had in 2019? they are mostly LCC base for which we can see that they leave you immediately there is no profit for them. I believe that both POZ and LJU deserve much better connectivity.
DeleteWhat difference does it make if it had legacy carriers or not?
DeleteMy point is, people here are crying like LJU is the most deserted airport in Europe, yet cities with twice the population have even less flights.
Yes but LJU is a capital city
DeleteIt's still a small town in a locked down country. That's the reality, if you don't sugar coat it.
DeleteAnd I'm glad that there is not many people like you, so I hope you will survive when we spend 70 mio on Air Slovenia which will bring good connectivity back to LJU.
DeleteGood luck
ReplyDeleteHope it works. The situation is quite bad at LJU.
ReplyDeleteWho would think there aren't many flights, when people aren't even allowed to leave their municipality.
DeleteShocking.
The situation was the same a month ago when they were allowed to leave.
DeleteAnd situation is the same in other countries as well and they perform much better than LJU. Only employees of Fraport does not see that and they have time to write nonsense here.
DeleteYes, all countries are affected but not all countries are equally affected. As we saw the other day we are most affected in Europe!
DeleteWhat you mean with most affected? Highest percentage of positive cases? That does not mean that situation is better in other countries, they just have different protocol for testing.
DeleteI can say that Covid doesn't know for borders so situation is the same everywhere.
I meant most affected in terms of passenger decline. I wasn't talking about the virus. I don't even think we are most affected in that respect. There are countries doing far worse.
DeleteOh I'm sorry, I agree, we are most affected in terms of passengers decline among EU. And I would say that this comparison is not ok for LJU because we already had low figures last year. So with normal last year figures and current situation decline would be even greater. Sad but true..
DeleteIs there any hope December numbers will at least see decline less than 80%+?
DeleteSo Fraport wants financial assistance around terminal, financial assistance in attracting airlines, is against national carrier... Anything else?
ReplyDeleteYes, they also want people working for free (most probably), so Skobir and Krasnja can get their fat paychecks for doing nothing. Gotta love that capitalism.
DeletePeanuts when you see what countries like Serbia and Croatia are giving their airlines.
ReplyDeleteBut also we will get peanuts for that money. Malo para malo muzike..
DeleteTrue. I doubt it will stimulate any new arrival.
DeleteThe idea is to keep the ones that do fly.
DeleteHonestly I think this was purely done so they could say they paid foreigners, it didn't lead to a major recovery, now it's time for a national airline.
ReplyDeleteI hope so!
DeleteWe all do!
DeleteI still don't understand why Swiss applied.
ReplyDeleteAnd why Transavia didn't.
DeleteI'm not. I looked at the tender documents and they are very confusing. I don't think the airlines realized when and for what they are supposed to apply.
DeleteIf their legal and administration teams don't understand it they should be really worried.
DeleteDoesn't seem Transavia cares :D
Delete"The measure is expected to benefit approximately twenty carriers."
ReplyDeleteHave 20 airlines even flown to LJU?
maybe through Slovenia, not to LJU :)
DeleteMeanwhile TK will reduce LJU to just 2 weekly...
ReplyDelete:(
DeleteA new national airline could do wonders. Really there is no other way. There was hope LCCs would rush in and replace Adria. It didn't happen. So the only solution is to create a new airline or keep dealing with low connectivity and an exodus of passengers using neighboring airports.
ReplyDelete+1000
DeleteHundreds of thousands of passenger every year used to use neighbouring airports even when JP was alive. I don't see that changing.
DeleteMy guess is the number was higher after Adria went bankrupt and before covid.
Delete@anon 10:43
Deleteyes but LJU also got hundreds of thousands from Croatia/Austria/Italy when JP was operating.
Really?
DeleteOk, I'm exaggerating with numbers as same as @anon 10:43 do.
DeleteBut truth is that both numbers are quite the same (Slovenians travelling outside of SLO and foreigners travelling from LJU).
Before you could barely see a car with Slovenian plates on airport parking lot. Nowadays you can barely see any car near airport :)
I still do not understand why Air Serbia does not have at least 5 flights per day with ATRs? I mean, flying them is cheap, and NOW is the right moment to establish yourself as the ONLY real airline in LJU.
DeleteThere is simply no demand at the moment. No one is travelling. Why would they fly empty planes?
Delete@anon 00:17
Deleteyou should really open flightradar and see that there are still plenty of planes in the air.
If you have 0 flights at LJU that does not mean that everywhere are doing the same.
Proof that this is needed
ReplyDeletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2020/11/air-france-extends-ljubljana-suspension.html
hah and TK reduced flights to LJU to twice per week.
Deleteand I wrote that this will happen after Fraport gave it's PR statement how situation will recover in september.
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2020/11/ljubljana-airport-to-see-mild-recovery.html
@09:48
correction
Delete*in december
Proof that national carrier is needed.
DeleteProof that Germans keep on milking Slovenes, even though 4K story has finished.
DeleteBravo Slovenija!
ReplyDeleteBravo EU!
DeleteGood decision. Now I expect them to approve funds for new national airline too
ReplyDeleteThat will be more difficult then this.
DeleteMore subventions.... How about stop bullshiting people with this covid, opening borders and start normal business. It is long proven that vast majority of risk group was about to die with or because covid within very near future anyway. If slovenia wants to do somethinf good the government should start protecting eldery homes and pay medical staff accordingly to effort.
ReplyDelete+
DeleteWe don't need a national carrier. Instead, let's give money to a foreign one. Foreigners know best, just look at how well Fraport and Adria did/are doing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Adria's performance was really fantastic before the sale. They made profit every year for the last 2 decades, owned all of their fleet, and then the government sold them for peanuts.
DeleteAnd situation after JP demise was so good, we had so many options to travel, foreign airlines competed who will fly to LJU. Really amazing situation.
Delete@13.02 it was not fantastic but at least before the Germans came flights were operating normally and on time. After Germans came most routes were suspended and flights constantly cancelled.
DeleteThey tried to make some money on ACMI flying, as most of the schedule of the "hub" network was not profitable, and there was no government to put couple of millions every year to plug the hole in the cashflow.
DeleteIt didn't work in the end, but they didn't have a lot of options, other than to cut more than half of the network.
Hah trying to make money on ACMI, that's good one :) I didn't know that money laundering is called "making money" nowadays. Everyone knew from the start that such amount of ACMI will not go through and 4k was still pushing for it. You can't drive 20 busses at the same time if you have 5 drivers.
DeleteAbout "non profitable" scheduled operations it is obvious that you can not make money on business which is the last one on list of priorities. And it should be the first one on that list, as JP was legacy carrier. Not that JP had daily schedule changes (time change, cancelations, triangle flights (LJU-MUC-ZRH-LJU))) because of charter/ACMI.
That practice was used even before 4k but after 4k took over it was only worse, much worse. So you can't expect something to work fine if you have to adjust all the time to other business.
The fact is that JP's business model prior to sale was unsustainable (i. e. losing money, year after year).
DeleteThey had two options, either grow the business until economies of scale catch up, or cut at least half of it and focus on couple of routes that make profit, and streamline the business this way.
Obviously growing didn't work, but I doubt reduction in fleet and personnel size would be very cheered as well.
True but that's because business model was totally wrong (as explained in previous mail, scheduled flights had lowest priority among other business) and uncompetitive managers were behind the wheel.
DeleteSo obviously it could work with different strategy and going into ACMI was even greater disaster than before.
Of all people here, complaining about bad conectivity. Can someone explain what would be different? Lets say Slovenia did have a national carrier. Who would fly on these flights?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of use cases and figure out, why would we need more connectivity now, etc.
You really think that national airline will start flying this year? It will probably take more than half a year to establish it. And by then covid vaccine will be created and life will go back to normal. And then it will probably start flying in late 2021. We have seen how many airlines started flying when Adria went bust. 4 daily flights to LH hubs and thats it. And even with these the time of the flights werent the best. So with national airline it would be much better for tourists, business people.. Soo much better to have a national airline than not to have it.
DeleteThat's true, connectivity was really poor even before Covid. Without 4-5 aircrafts base in LJU it's not gonna work. If LH, LX, SN, AF, OS will do that then I'm against national carrier but we all know that this is not gonna happen.
DeleteWhy do you need 5 aircraft based in LJU for good connectivity?
DeleteAll you really need is LH Group to overnight 3 aircraft, so you have early morning conenctions to their hubs.
And you would fly where with those 3 aircrafts? FRA, ZRH, BRU? What about MUC, VIE, CPH or we are not good enough to have those flights?
DeleteIt took half a year to LH to deploy aircraft during the night in LJU and still their timetable is not on level what we had before. Not to mention that midle flight is missing but also their afternoon flight to FRA is way to early.
So if you think that we could get 2 additional aircraft in LJU to stay overnight then you should think again.
FRA, MUC, BRU.
DeleteVIE is way too close by car, as even people from the NE of the country will never go to VIE by air, so the catchment area is very small. People close to Croatian border will naturally rather go to ZAG, especially once Croatia enters Schengen. Very few people would increase their travel time, just to fly from LJU.
ZRH as a hub isn't as good as FRA and MUC, and has nothing extra to offer really.
"It took half a year to LH to deploy aircraft during the night in LJU"
Of course it took them that long. They first had to fill the gaps in their existing network that were caused by Adria not being able to fly the wet-leased routes for LH and OS.
I agree about FRA and BRU but not MUC. MUC is just one hour more by car from LJU than VIE. It's about 3 hours to VIE, about 4 hours to MUC. In addition to that,, LH shifted almost all long haul to FRA, which was even before bigger and main hub. ZRH or CPH should be the third, or both, why not
Delete@anon 20:03
Deleteif you want to drive for 3 hours for a meeting and then go back that's your choice but I certainly would not do that. Also VIE or MUC convenient for transfers than FRA. I'm not talking about long haul flights where FRA is dominating.
Not to mention that you would no include direct flights to ZRH, JP used to have 3 daily flights.
Actually I see that even 5 aircrafts base in LJU are not enough, we want what we had with old JP (before 4k took over and flew for foreign airlines).
e
Do you REALLY need to travel to MUC or VIE just for a meeting? 2020 and Zoom called.
DeleteSure, why stop at 5, let's make it 20. Get couple of widebodies as well for direct flights to JFK, LAX, SYD, HKG, NRT. Why would we be constrained by logic, when you can dream big?
We are not at school and some things can not be done through Zoom/Skype. And I agree that only sky should be a limit, so hopefully one day we will even see widebodies in LJU. So I hope that government will spend much more than 70 mio for Air Slovenia as we Slovenians deserve to have good connectivity in LJU. I hope you will survive that :)
DeleteBusiness travel will take a long time to recover, if it will recover to 2019 ever again. A lot of businesses are transitioning to WFH for a significant part of their workforce, and not just schools, believe it or not.
DeleteAs a result, there will be less one-day meetings on the other side of Europe just for the sake it.
But still there will be many of us who want/need to travel and we will gladly use Air Slovenia flights. But I really don't mind if you use car and drive for few hours to VIE/MUC.
DeleteAnd you would fly where with those 3 aircrafts? FRA, ZRH, BRU? What about MUC, VIE, CPH or we are not good enough to have those flights?
ReplyDeleteIt took half a year to LH to deploy aircraft during the night in LJU and still their timetable is not on level what we had before. Not to mention that midle flight is missing but also their afternoon flight to FRA is way to early.
So if you think that we could get 2 additional aircraft in LJU to stay overnight then you should think again.