The two Gulf carriers maintaining flights to the Croatian capital - Flydubai and Qatar Airways - handled almost the same number of passengers on their respective Zagreb service in 2022, for a combined total of 100.656 travellers. Last year, Flydubai welcomed 50.771 passengers on its Zagreb operations, while Qatar Airways saw 49.885 customers. The 2022 FIFA World Cup significantly aided the Qatari carrier’s performance, with passenger numbers increasing sharply on its Zagreb service in November and December as it deployed wide-body aircraft on the route, including the Boeing 777 and Airbus A350, to cater for fans. Passenger numbers on the two routes are still significantly below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.
Flydubai is maintaining up to six weekly flights between Dubai and Zagreb this summer. Prior to the pandemic, the route was operated by Emirates and its wide-body aircraft over the summers, while Flydubai took over during the quieter winter months. Emirates has said no final decision has been made concerning its return to Zagreb. “We hope to restart our operations in Zagreb when it is commercially and operationally feasible to do so in the future, and we will make a formal announcement if there are any developments in this regard”, the airline noted. Emirates and Flydubai jointly handled 130.937 passengers between Dubai and Zagreb in 2019, meaning figures on the route in 2022 were down 61.2%.
Flydubai Zagreb route performance, 2022
Qatar Airways is operating daily flights to Zagreb this summer, up from the three to five weekly rotations maintained last year but down on the double daily service in 2019. The carrier benefited from the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the Croatian national football team’s run to the semi finals of the tournament. Its 2022 December figures were the strongest out of the entire year. However, its passenger numbers were still down 61.9% on 2019. The airline will mark elven years of operations to the Croatian capital next month.
Qatar Airways Zagreb route performance, 2022
Bravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteOf course
DeleteSo if we take out the World Cup, it means that FlyDubai is actually doing significantly better on the route than Qatar.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense. QR relies only on transfers and most of Asia was closed until mid 2022. Flydubai has point to point traffic.
DeleteWow! How come? Does it mean Croatians travel somewhere? To Dubai? No way. These are for sure Banja Luka passengers because Slovenians have Flydubai as well and it's wellknown fact that Croatians don't fly by plane and there is no demand in Zagreb of whatever kind 😃 Btw just heard about group of people taking BUS from Pula to Belgrade to catch cheap Wizz Abu Dhabi flight. But those were probably Italians 😃
Delete@ 10.35 Same with Macedonian airports - no tourist, no Macedonian diaspora, no Macedonians who travel outside of the country... only Albanian travellers... lmao
DeleteIt is interesting that PiR is of the opinion that 100,000 passengers is a lot for Zagreb if you also exclude the tourists. That's why Zagreb is ranked 100th in Europe because so many locals fly.
DeleteAs someone wrote here yesterday:
Delete2.7 million for 24 airports in the first two months is a disaster.
How sad that you have to take a bus from Pula to Belgrade because the plane ticket from the nearby airport is too expensive. How long does the bus run 8h?
DeleteI still find it strange that OU doesn't fly to Serbia. AirSerbia can't put frequencies out there to compete with the busses. But Croatia Airlines should be able to do it with a Dash.
DeleteWhole of coastline could easily be connected, one way bus tickets are over 50$, so a plane ticket of around 80 should be competitive.
@Pozdrav What would we do without Bosnians from Banja Luka. No cheep labour, no air passengers to the most exotic locations.
DeleteWould be interesting to see how LJU performed for Flydubai
ReplyDeleteIt has been published. They had 45,263 to LJU
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/02/lufthansa-remains-ljubljanas-busiest.html
they should perform even better this year ... i noticed many austrians and italians using Ljubljana-Dubai flights.
DeleteBasically FZ served almost the same number of passengers?
DeleteZAG: 50.771
LJU 45.263
Yes, with more flights in LJU
DeleteSo this year LJU will no doubt overtake ZAG especially since there is no World Cup.
DeleteLets see what happens when EY starts their flights to LJU.
DeleteEY in LJU? LOL
DeleteYeah EY is really rushing to start Ljubljana. Where do you get these ideas from.
DeleteWait and see
Delete@9:12 numbers for Jan 2023 are twice compared to Jan 2022.
DeleteWow that's a big increase during the World Cup.
ReplyDeleteInteresting numbers. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWith Asia reopening, QR started to grow and now has more frequencies than FZ. 2022 was still not favorable to QR as many key markets were closed or limited. Good to see them growing to daily service!
ReplyDeleteI still can't believe that QR used to have yeae round double daily flights to Zagreb and now it is on daily.
ReplyDeleteI thought that they would use the opportunity now that Emirates is gone.
DeleteIn the meantime GCC reopened for QR and many aircrafts were grounded over Airbus issue snd they will start to come back later in the year. Guess that availabilty of aircraft is too scarce plus still no capacity to Adia as in 2019.
DeleteUnfortunately I don't see a chance of EK coming back
ReplyDeletesame feeling ... dont see them before 2025.
DeleteOnly chance is if both FZ services, LJU and ZAG will be cancelled.
Deletewhich wont happen ...
DeleteFZ will never cut LJU in favor of ZAG, they are doing very, very well.
DeleteHow on Earth they are doing well in LJU? They less passengers with more flights last year. That is all but not well.
DeleteAlso, FZ will have less flights to LJU this year than 2022. Numbers speaks for itself.
DeleteI am talking about this year my friend. Last year ZAG was ahead only because of the world cup so many flew to Doha via Dubai.
DeleteThis year LJU will have more passengers with FZ becauase loads are better from LJU.
In ZAG on average they are around 65%
Croats flew to world cup from ZAG, LJU, BUD, BEG, VIE.. So it had impact on all that airport numbers last year, not only ZAG like you want to present.
DeleteLol. I don't see much Croats flying from/to LJU. More like Slovenians flying from/to ZAG.
DeleteThere is no laugh about that. I am talking about world cup period, where Croats use all around airports to go in Qatar World Cup. Prices from ZAG was not so cheap in all that period.
DeleteQR will.operate daily year round, FZ 4 to 5 weekly, so I woild expect QR to grow significantly.
DeleteThat was very close last year
ReplyDeleteIndeed just 886 passengers apart.
DeleteIs it possible that Turkish took over some of Doha and Dubai transfers?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. Especially since they were among the first airlines to return after Covid.
DeleteHow many weekly flights did Turskih operate before covid hit?
DeleteDouble daily. Same as now.
DeletePity about Covid. Qatar would have been flying with Dreamliner now.
ReplyDeleteto ZAG
DeleteWhen can we expect the 2019 passenger numbers from Asia and Australia to come around
DeleteAnon 11.37 If there wasn't the covid, Qatar would have been flying the A388 to LJU
DeleteThank you for these. Love reading about stats for loads.
ReplyDeleteWould be interesting if we could calculate the average load factors based on these numbers.
ReplyDelete