Low cost carriers (LCCs) Wizz Air, easyJet and Ryanair have all shown interest in concluding cooperation agreements with the country’s Ministry for Infrastructure and the Ministry for Economic Development and Technology concerning the launch of new routes to Ljubljana, according to the “Dnevnik” daily. However, no agreement has so far been reached. The trio have held talks with the relevant ministries over the past few months. Wizz Air and easyJet, which already serve the Slovenian capital, are instead reducing their presence in the city over the winter months. All three are seeking some form of subsidies or support from the state in order to introduce new services.
The Slovenian government is in favour of concluding such cooperation agreements in order to improve the country’s connectivity. The government believes that such form of financial support would be more sustainable than investing in a new state-owned flag carrier. Since the demise of the former national airline Adria Airways in September 2019, the government has attempted to soften the impact of the company’s collapse by offering subsidies to airlines already flying to the country to continue doing so. It has also considered using European Union funds to establish a carrier as part of its post-Covid development strategy, however, this was struck down by the block.
Over the past two years, the Ministry for Economic Development and Technology has turned down several offers by airlines to either establish the country’s new national carrier or station aircraft in Ljubljana, noting that none would have sufficiently improved the country’s connectivity and were “short-term oriented”. “There was actually no appropriate proposal which would have enabled passengers travelling from or to Slovenia to benefit from high quality service, based on the proposed destinations, the timing and flight schedules, as well as the opportunities for connecting onto flights at Europe’s most important hubs”, the Ministry told EX-YU Aviation news earlier this year.
And as always, nothing will happen.
ReplyDeleteAnd what should happen??
DeleteIf there was demand there would be a commensurate level of supply and vice versa. Why subsidy and thus create something if does not exist?
Is it just me or are both current and former government doing everything in their power not to improve Slovenia's air connectivity?
ReplyDeleteThey simply don't care.
DeleteIt angers me that several airlines gave offered solutions and all have been turned away.
ReplyDeleteSlovenian government has already given money to Lufthansa group
DeleteAnd in the end Wizz suspended Charleroi over winter and easyjet is down to one weekly flight. Well done.
ReplyDeleteSad
DeleteIf the free market can only sustain one weekly London flight why should the government waste tax payers money on what would become a vanity project?
DeleteInteresting that free market could sustain up to 3 flights a day before pandemic.
DeleteTimes have changed.
DeleteAnd that change is only in LJU.
DeleteNo not all all, many airports bubbles have burst.
DeleteI just wonder who are the experts at the ministry to decide if route and scheduling is good for Slovenia.
ReplyDeleteI guess having nothing is best for them.
DeleteIdiots
DeleteArrivals to LJU today and lately are mainly turboprops or small planes. You see so fewer flights from Europe.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is going to be cheaper than having a national airline? I would like to hear concerned taxpayer's brigade opinions. Don't forget where the pofit goes. And also don't forget about Wizz and their Balkan story.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing. What I was preaching two years ago is finally becoming a reality: if you want air connectivity, pay fot it. Just like pay for everything else. People somehow think that airline tickets should be cheaper than bus or train. Now were would they get that idea?
DeleteYes it is going to be cheaper: The former national carrier amassed losses of $60 Million and offered a handful od routes out of LJU with expensive tickets from which hardly anybody could benefit whereas subsidies to LCCs would be MUCH lower than Adria's losses as well as the ticket prices offered.
DeleteBest regards
Concerned tax payer
Anonymous 10:01 you are totally right. But the problem now is, that country doesn't want to invest anything in supporting LCCs.
DeleteWhy would the government need to support foreign operators? So that there would be cheap tickets from Ljubljana to Rhodos? In your opinion which connections does Ljubljana need? To which airports?
Delete€ 60mio was ACCUMULATED loss, not a single year loss. Please start witj basic facts.
Delete@10:01:
DeleteI was waiting for the usual expert analysis based on precise figures, such as MUCH, very expensive,...
What was the time frame in which Adria accured those losses? A year?aybe 6 years, equating to 10 million per year (as much as YOU will be paying to an LCC). Is LH cheaper than Adria. No, of course not.
At least with LCCs, Slovenian tax payers would get a reliable service with cheap tickets and they wouldn’t be subsidising a national airline flying PRN-FRA, while tickets from LJU cost hundreds of Euros.
Delete@10:01: Handful? You're a funny guy/gal. That "handful" was approximately 300% of the current routes (not taking into account frequencies). Maybe concerned taxpayers should be more actively involved with our health care system (and physicians demanding higher salaries every two years). Leave the aviation business to those who actually know a thing or two.
Delete@10:58:
DeleteReliable service? I just peed my pants while laughing. Have you heard of a company called Wizzair?
How about Easyjet or Ryanair? They are pretty reliable.
DeleteAnonymous 10:17 so why can others sustain that and we not? So that we fly from neighbour airports and leave our money to them instead of ours?
DeleteWho are the "others"? Zagreb has more than a million people and a much bigger, booming tourism sector. Nearly a million Croats live scattered across most of Western Europe who like to return home every now and then. Venice is renown as one of the richest destinations when it comes to history and art. The city easily attracts millions of tourist from all across the globe. More people visit Venice each year than the whole Slovenia. Treviso, Trieste, Celovec and Gradec are unimportant, small regional airports that maintain only a few daily connections to cities in the same language sphere. Budapest is successful to a certain degree only because of cheap Wizz Air tickets, but we now see how sustainable that model is. Did I miss any airport?
DeleteAw, ok... accumulated losses of 60 Million over 6 years are not as nearly bad then.. silly me... you can even count it as a profit then.
DeleteAdria served mainly as a LH feeder, and now LH has stepped in, from that standpoint there is no loss of connectivity- and prices were/are similar.
People use neighboring airports not because of loss of connectivity but because of lack of LCCs in LJU so they must fly out of ZAG with Ryanair
Many people use a distorted metric about previous years regarding numbers of passengers at LJU- majority of which were in transit so basically just a number with no economic relevance whatsoever (if you exclude every 100th of those you may have bought a cappuccino for 4 Eur)
Ljubljana and Gradec both have way more pottential than what we have now. LJU had in the past more than 1.8 million passengers yearly, and that was with Adria around, which was known to the citizens as expensive and you could barely hear from someone that travelled with them (with the exception of charters). Also Gradec has had over a million passengers already in the past. I agree about Celovec and Trst. But LJU, as the central (and only "real" working) airport in the country of more than 2 million people has way more pottential as that, Gradec also.
Delete@14:33:
DeleteYour point being? Is there something wrong with flying to LH hubs, where people can actually fly to anywhere in the world? Or would you rather have Adria flying to 50 destinations with an average load factor of 1%? No, accumulated loss of 10 million/year is not that bad. How much will YOU, a concerned tax payer, have to pay Ryanair? 10 million? And in return you will be able to fly to secondary airports with no long haul connections. But it will work great for stag parties, won’t it?
“ Many people use a distorted metric about previous years regarding numbers of passengers at LJU- majority of which were in transit so basically just a number with no economic relevance whatsoever (if you exclude every 100th of those you may have bought a cappuccino for 4 Eur)”
DeleteWhat does that even mean? majority of which were in transit? So are you saying JP generated more than 50% of its pax figures out of transfers? HAHAH
Yes and two Croatian airlines live and grow from them unlike AA.
DeleteI tata bi sine. Their solution was that the government gives them millions every year in order to fly without any potential business risk. On top of that, the government would not even have a say in which routes could be opened or their frequency. How exactly would that improve air connectivity? Paying some foreign airline to fly their most profitable routes, whenever and wherever they want, while not having any power to decide about routes that could actually help the economy
ReplyDeleteAsk the concerned tax payer above. He seems to think it’s a great idea.
DeleteThe thing is, Ryanair saw how desperate LJU is becoming (one of the worst performing airports in EU). They’ve seen that LH doesn’t give two shi*s about the airport. That’s why they’re the one settting the terms and conditions, not LJU. And Ryanair will do whatever they want. If LJU doesn’t cooperate, they won’t do business with them. Simple.
So dissapointed about out government investing nothing in air connectivity. We could have everything what other airports have. Yet our people have to drive hundreds of kilometers to other countries to catch LCC flights.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteAt least there is still some interest being shown
ReplyDeleteWizz and easyJet are both making huge losses, so the state support will have to be huge to attract them!
ReplyDeleteGovernment under Golob is probably the worst preforming government slovenia had in the past years. After more than 6 months nothing has changed bar the tax reform that will tax the common people more.
ReplyDeleteNo revolutionary reforms, nothing done for pretty much anyone and worst of all its stagnating - all things that they were saying previous government was doing.
I voted left for my entire life, but i think this April was the last time I did it.
Air Montenegro, with seemingly worse management that you can possibly imagine, lawsuits etc. lost 2 million this year... We'll probably be paying that amount per quartal if optimistic. Stupid idea all together and the one that clearly doesn't work for capital cities (Sarajevo, Bratislava...)
What slovenia needs is not just turist destinations but also business ones...Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Prague are all missing for someone doing business in Slovenia, and we know AMS won't be solved by paying LLCs...
ReplyDeleteSlovenia needs national airline
They already gave 1.8mio to foreign carriers
ReplyDeleteThe state should move low cost airlines to Ljubljana-Maribor (MBX) airport
ReplyDeleteGood solution, since LJU is exploding with traffic
DeleteDoes anyone from Slovenia really know what is or the main reasons why the country is not being able to create a new national airline? Is it really that difficult to order or lease 5 aircraft to begin with? After all, we are not talking about some poor African country.
ReplyDeleteEven if this is not possible, why does LJU still lack a LCC base even with 1 based aircraft? Only 1.
I will give you at least one reason - functioning airline needs more than just pilots and flight attendants. It needs a lot of competent people, which have found new employment. They are not crazy to join something, which can be shut down again. Slovenia has killed any chance of national airline and there will never be anything remotely similar to Adria. Yes, they had losses, but they can widely be contributed to some very stupid decisions (like buying two A319 instead leasing them, criminal money drain by Albanian mafia in USA and some other extremely poorly thought actions they took. Plus, the managerial part was just growing and growing.... With some smart leadership Adria could be at positive 0 or some modest profit. And now we have absurd situation, where LCC, which are the absolute champions in promoting and requesting capitalist approach, who are constantly monitoring legacy airliners for any kind of state support, who are the high priests of free and deregulated market....to constantly beg and request exactly what they are denying everybody else. This makes me sick and I deeply despise them from the bottom of my heart.
DeleteThe issue with government creating a national airline, is that it would probably be Adria 2.0 in pretty much all aspects. Same aircraft, same routes, same business model, with politically appointed management and nepotism spreading around like wildfire.
DeleteSlovenia has very few (if any at all) aviation business managers, experienced in running a profitable airline. Add to the fact that the market is extremely small, with a lot of LCC competition from all sides, chances for success would be very small, which (the three successive) goverments are well aware of, and probably know it would be a political suicide to try and start a new national carrier.
Single aircraft LCC bases are becoming a rare thing, as the operating costs per aircraft are much higher than with a base with 3+ aircraft - which LJU probably can’t sustain.
Guys, thanks a lot for your feedback. Been following aviation in Slovenia and wish it could be just as competitive in an EU level. Beautiful country that is the second most visited in ex-Yu for good reasons....even sad for me as a non-Slovene to see this. Good luck!
DeleteMy 2 cents: Slovenia is more or less unrecognisable in the EU, let lone in the world. What Adria needed was actually joint cooperation between the tourism sector, the government and the management. All of them should have done a lot more in making Slovenia more recognisable.
DeleteThe domestic market just isn’t big enough to sustain an airline. I would guestimate that the averge Slovenian travels abroad (by plane) once every 5 years.
anon above: you totally nailed it. New airline would have to be just one part of bigger plan and bigger tourism project. It has been proven many times through some studies how all those mentioned sectors can thrive only in sinergy, not alone and isolated.
DeleteFlydubai is also decreasing LJU. Will they also ask for state support?
ReplyDeleteThey already get it
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2022/07/ten-airlines-granted-slovenian-subsidies.html
The decrease is only during World Cup in Doha because Flydubai is operating 50 shuttle flights per day to Doha and needs planes.
Delete^Nope, World Cup is from November to December, while they are canceling flights from January to June.
DeleteI hope some solution can be found and Ljubljana Airport can thrive again.
ReplyDeleteWizz Air and easyjet already get subsidies. What more do they want?
ReplyDeleteThose subsidies are peanuts. Like 10,000 euros.
Delete