Slovenia allocates €5.6 million for launch of new routes


The Slovenian government has adopted a bill allocating 5.6 million euros in subsidies for airlines to launch new routes and boost frequencies on existing services. The state will provide a list of new destinations for which it will offer subsidies, with a public call to be issued soon. Only nonstop operations will be financed. Furthermore, airlines will be eligible for subsidies if they increase frequencies on existing services. The incentives will amount to up to 50% of the carrier’s airport fees in Slovenia. This is to address complaints, made primarily by budget airlines, that charges at Ljubljana Airport are too high.

The bill requires approval from the European Commission as it constitutes state aid. "We have already forwarded the bill to them. We are acting fast because we want to finalise the process before the summer season, which already begins at the end of March”, the incoming Minister for Infrastructure, Alenka Bratušek, said. The Minister for Economic Development and Technology, Matjaž Han, noted, "We have secured a source of funding for air links in Slovenia for a period of three years. The objective of the proposed bill is to improve Slovenia’s air connectivity by preserving existing and promoting the establishment of new regular air routes to and from Slovenia”.

The Slovenian Ministry for Infrastructure recently noted, “It is of vital importance for Slovenia to be included in global trends. As an export-oriented economy, we can only compete by being physically present on global markets, which is precisely what regular and reliable airlines provide. Solid air connections are even more important for the tourism sector, as we want to attract as many foreign guests from more distant markets to Slovenia as possible. This segment is also of great importance for congress tourism". It added, “Additional short-term measures need to be implemented, namely subsidising additional new routes and incentivising an increase in frequencies to the most important destinations for our economy and tourism”
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Comments

  1. Anonymous09:00

    I'm very interested to see which destinations they are going to pick.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous09:05

      Which ones could they be? I'm certain Skopje will be one of them since they have already talked about it. What else?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous09:07

      if you ask me: Berlin, Skopje, Copenhagen, Madrid, Barcelona, Sarajevo, Rome. Maybe even Prague, Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna, Amsterdam (KLM). Or maybe even something crazy like Doha.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous09:18

      Little chance of Amsterdam since it will only be routes not served in the last year.

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    4. Anonymous09:19

      “airlines will be eligible for subsidies if they increase frequencies on existing services.“ please read article again

      Delete
    5. Anonymous09:27

      Maybe Easyjet or Ryanair or Jet2 to Manchester or Birmingham? Or Aer Lingus to Dublin?

      Delete
    6. Anonymous10:04

      Ryanair could operate: Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, Manchester, Prague, Dublin, Sofia.

      Delete
    7. Anonymous10:19

      I know it was published here a few times the list of busiest unserved routes from LJU. I'm pretty sure most of those will be included.

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    8. Anonymous10:22

      So how many new routes can we expect?

      Delete
    9. Anonymous10:29

      @10.19

      From an earlier article here: "Based on OAG data, the busiest unserved routes from Ljubljana are those previously operated by Adria. They include Bucharest, Copenhagen, Skopje, Athens, Stockholm, Barcelona and Prague."

      Delete
    10. Anonymous12:05

      Athens will be back with Aegean !!!

      Delete
    11. Anonymous15:40

      I just read some additional info regarding proposal and their plan is to sub not only EU flights but only third country flights (most probably ex-yu, tirana, doha). they said they need to wait for EK to turn on a green light mostly for second part - third country because first part is def inline with EU practice.

      Delete
    12. Anonymous16:08

      Maribor-Portorož

      Delete
    13. Anonymous19:28

      LJU - Portoroz maybe once in the future, if LJU manages to develop itself and could carry transfer passengers in the summer season, e.g. with Let L-410.

      Delete
    14. From routes to third countries, SKP and PRN have enough OD traffic, probably also DOH (up to 3x/weekly on A320).

      From all unserved routes FNC is the biggest surprise for me. A lot of transfers from LJU and neighbouring airports.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous09:01

    Finally some good news. This way they might be able to attract some airlines.

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  3. Anonymous09:01

    Bratusek lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous09:03

      She is back :D

      Delete
    2. Anonymous09:04

      Black mamby strikes again :(

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    3. Anonymous09:05

      mamba

      Delete
    4. Anonymous13:06

      I still can’t fathom the stupidity of the people who voted for her.

      Delete
  4. Anonymous09:03

    Good but I don't like that the government is picking out the destinations, knowing their track record on aviation.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous14:28

      Hey it could be worse ... Levica could be in charge of this ... and Mesec said at that hearing that he opposes the creation of a new national airline BECAUSE a new national BUS company would make more sense. So, things could be better if someone who is not black mamba (or people sharing her world view) would be in charge of thes decisions, but it could also always be worse.

      Delete
    2. However you see particular people in the GOV structure, this team seems to have a bit more clue how to cope with situation. If they do not know, they at least listen to people with some knowledge.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous09:04

    Sounds similar to the incentive scheme in Skopje.

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  6. Anonymous09:05

    I'm assuming only European routes will be eligible for subsidies?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous09:06

    I think this is good news and I think this way some new routes (and airlines) will be secured. Of course could have been done years ago.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous09:13

    So let's see what we have. SAS could serve Copenhagen and Stockholm at least one of them I hope. It would be nice if this brings back Finnair and Iberia for Helsinki and Madrid as well. Jet2 would be the perfect addition with flights to Manchester. Wizz could finally launch SKP and maybe there could be someone to launch Sarajevo and Tirana. Tarom could serve a few weekly to Bucarest wit Atr76. Easyjet should bring back BER and Eurowings or Condor should launch Hamburg as demand is very high. Maybe even Dusseldorf. Vueling would be a nice addition with Barcelona flights and Wizz could think about flights to VLC. And lastly there is Austrian with Vienna flights and Airbaltic with Riga maybe. Now I know this list is really big and I know that in the best case 2 or 3 of these routes will be launched.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous09:14

      And I forgot to mention KLM to Amsterdam which is a must.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous09:21

      Jet2 to MAN… What? Maybe they should also do Leeds

      Delete
    3. Anonymous09:22

      Maybe this is a moment for Ryanair

      Delete
    4. Anonymous09:24

      I doubt will see Wizz launching a direct flight LJU-TIA, since they recently announced TIA-TRS flights from July and TRS is only 1hr and 20mins far from LJU by car. But SJJ should defenitely be in the bucket list.

      Delete
    5. Anonymous09:25

      Yes, Jet2 to Manchester what's the big deal? Manchester always had a high demand from LJU, and even Adria served it. Slovenia has absolutely zero connections with anything above London so Manchester is a pretty simple choice.

      Delete
  9. Anonymous09:28

    "Finančna ocena pa po besedah Bratušek znaša 5,6 milijona evrov letno. “Izračun temelji na tem, da bi zagotovili 10 letalskih povezav na dan za 255 dni letno. Na letalu bi bilo med 120 in 130 potnikov. Subvencija bi znašala 17 evrov na potnika,” ... This part is missing in this artikle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11:03

      About 350k pax

      Delete
    2. Anonymous11:30

      So they will try to get additional 10 flights per day or they will secure that every day there will be 10 flights from LJU?

      Delete
  10. notLufthansa09:32

    where is the "no new Adria" brigade now? Handing over almost 6 mil per year to foreign companies is so typical of late capitalism and marketism (market will take care of everything)....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous09:53

      yes, selling airport and airline was totally stupid. Imagine what we would have if we would invest into adria 10MIO every year. Not to mention we more than 40MIO subsidies for trains and buses every year.

      Delete
    2. This is just step nu.1, Slovenia will soon have its own national carrier!

      Delete
  11. Anonymous10:13

    Finally some sense!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous10:13

    They should have been doing this in October last year so airlines could include Ljubljana in their summer plans. Now it's too late.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:18

      Completely agree. By the time EU approves it and the government issues the call it will be summer.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10:44

      I think the eu hearing is this month

      Delete
    3. EC already gave its preliminary statement regarding state aid frame, so the GOV already knows the scope EC will most probably approve.

      Delete
  13. Anonymous10:23

    I say Amelia should station one of their Atrs and one of their A319s in Lju.
    Routes should be:
    -Barcelona
    -Berlin
    -Stockholm
    -Brussels (increase)
    -Prague
    -Vienna
    -Bucharest
    -Skopje

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:43

      It would be perfect, yes but I highly doubt that anything like that will happen.

      Delete
  14. Anonymous10:47

    So can anyone explain to me, why country can spend 300mio€ for train connectivity, without EU approval, but 5mio yearly needs to be confirmed by EU?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One thing is infrastructure project, other thing is subsidising companies (Airlines).

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:48

      Railways are in majority state ownership around the EU. Airlines operate in the free market, and just blank subsidies from one of the member states are typically seen as illegal state aid.

      Delete
  15. Anonymous10:48

    What LJU also needs is Doha flights. So many Slovenes are flying to Qatar from ZAG.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Around 5% pax on flights from ZAG to DOH are slovenians.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:50

      This can not be accurate

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    3. Why it couldn't be accurate? DOH is not P2P destination like DXB, it's rather boring. Not that many Slovenes work in Qatar. Almost no slovenian diaspora in Australia. Some transfers to Thailand /Vietnam /Cambodia, and that's it. There are probably more passengers going to Slovenia via ZAG with QR but those are people from the Far East, Japan, Korea. So 5 % is quite accurate in my opinion as well. But then, some people were posting here 50 % passengers on Emirates from ZAG were Slovenes, so I am not surprised they are trying the same now with QR as well

      Delete
    4. Anonymous15:00

      But as you see, the passenger numbers to / from DXB for both ZAG and LJU are incredible considering quite a big part of Asia still has covid related travel restrictions. That is why Qatar would probably be a nice addition for LJU.

      Delete
    5. Yes, I fully agree, I think too QR can make it in LJU, but definitely not because of Slovenian passengers predominantly, but because of those from the Far East, especially when travelling habits get back to normal after pLandemic madness is over

      Delete
  16. Anonymous10:49

    In case they will subsidize flights where you have to call a phone number to ask if the plane is still departing up on a timetable then its better they close the airports! PRN come on! we are in 2023 and you cant book a ticket online? ljubljana is in german hands however for panflights we need MXP/ROM, MAD and LIS, additional PMI and BCN additional flights to UK Manchaster as JP flew. The question is about PRG and maybe BUD. More ideas to gain tourists? Izrael, additional airport to middle east, Sofia, Dublin. CPH.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:53

      You realize that the whole of Pristina operations is done with "call-to-reserve" system? No idea why, but for example MyWings doesn't even have an operating website

      Delete
    2. Anonymous11:26

      good luck with such kind of operations!

      Delete
  17. Anonymous11:54

    If Jet2 can do MAN-INN then LJU should be manageable. Adria used to have Wednesday and Saturday flights into Manchester so I'm sure there will still be sufficient demand.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:27

      agreed

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:28

      I agree

      Delete
    3. Anonymous12:49

      Jet2 do MAN-INN for skiing holidays in the winter. Much more British people will go skiing in Austria than they will in Slovenia.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous13:54

      I did MAN-INN last June, so...

      Delete
  18. Anonymous15:01

    doesn't Jet2 always have a holiday programme with their flights..do they offer holidays in Slovenia? didn't think it offered flights where it does not have a holiday programme. yes you can buy a flight only to AGP, ALC, TFS, SPU, DBV etc bit they offer hols with accomm there?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous21:37

      If they do it will only be using Austrian airports, with a long transfer to Bohinj, etc. That's what Inghams, TUI, and Balkan Holidays have to do.

      Delete
  19. Anonymous21:57

    Air Serbia could launch the following routes:
    BEG-LJU-TGD-LJU-BEG
    or
    BEG-LJU-TGD-BEG
    or
    BEG-TGD-LJU-TGD-BEG.

    If subsidies available try same routes substituting TIR for TGD.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous00:58

      Would be solid revenue source for JU.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous08:14

      Cro should do: zg-skopje-lj-sarajevo-lj-skopje-zg

      Delete

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