NEWS FLASH
Zagreb Airport saw its busiest month in August since December 2019 as it handled 194.993 passengers, representing a decrease 48.1% on two years ago. During the month, Croatia Airlines had the largest number of seats on offer to and from the Croatian capital at 151.144. It was followed by Ryanair with 29.286 seats and KLM with 20.960 seats. Frankfurt was the busiest route in terms of offered capacity, followed by Dubrovnik and Amsterdam. During the January - August period, Zagreb Airport welcomed 686.688 travellers though its doors, down 69.8% on two years ago.
This is very weak performance.
ReplyDeleteAustrian Airlines is reducing ZAG to 4 weekly.
ReplyDeleteWow.
ReplyDeleteSarajevo: 150k
Zagreb: 190k
:S
First you need to count same things. Sarajevo have on first 6 months 163.00 and Zagreb jave on August 194.000. Quite different isnt it?
DeleteYes my friend but when you are counting you do it to create and see a trend. That's where Sarajevo is thriving.
DeleteZagreb keeps winning!
ReplyDeleteWinning race to the bottom, that is. PRN, SKP, BEG, SJJ all had much better performance this year. Number 2 in ExYu keeps falling lower. And that picture is not a shining example of prestige airlines.
DeleteSPU as well.
DeleteThis is horrible result!
LJU is winning race to the bottom. It went from 3. busiest airport to like 13. or 14. in just 10 years.
DeleteAuch!
ReplyDeleteZAD 166.000
ZAG 190.000
Believe it.
Kako to da ovdje nema Bravo Hrvatska komentatora?
ReplyDeleteWell, nothing of unexpected. Having a minor regional feeder instead of a strong home carrier as your main customer doesn’t leave you with many options. Or it does if you’re Zagreb Airport operator. That was perfect situation for the concessionaire and they were happy about it, unfortunately. Ironically, the same Turkish de facto operator of Zagreb Airport also operates the so much praised Skopje Airport where they have been acting in another way.
ReplyDeleteThe management in Zagreb has clearly discouraged lccs until just a few months ago. And if there wasn’t the pandemic it would still be that way, because if the traffic went up they had to expand the terminal right away as required under the concession agreement. So they opted for merely generic growth in order to postpone the expansion as close as to the final possible deadline.
Furthermore, knowing that they can’t compete as a transfer airport with so many direct continental routes to the coast they have put the focus on intercontinental and long haul, where Zagreb can serve as the main entry point to Croatia. So they brought a couple of big names and claimed success, all in line with their generic growth strategies. That worked well pre-pandemic.
But in current situation, with Canada, Australia and the Far East being closed and lacking in diaspora/expats/workers flights, lacking in flights that would put Zagreb into the market of city break destinations, lacking in basically everything except for a dozen flights to * Alliance hubs it is quite obvious why Skopje, Pristina and Sarajevo perform better. Hopefully things will change for Zagreb Airport once Ryanair sets the base. Don’t expect anything radical though, like WIzz Air opening a base or so, it’s simply not in the management’s interest.
The management have always favored LCC development until now. The authority discouraged it to protect Croatian Airlines. However, after the pandemic, the authority couldn't resist anymore.
DeleteLCCs are becoming more and more important for aviation business and every smart operator would like to have them in their airport. Its the authorities who simply resist due to protecting other "interests".
New airport in Zagreb was mistake since public tender. Instead of searching for operator who would compete with Belgrade, Ljubljana and Budapest with locked in lower price per passenger in range of 10-25% against the average of those three main competitors, government asked for expensive airport building through corrupted architect's tender, and allowed concession holder (current operator) to hike the price per passenger from 9 EUR to 25 EUR while also increasing separate charges for planes and domestic flights, so much so that flying to Asia is twice cheaper from Budapest airport.
ReplyDelete