Four markets from the former Yugoslavia are set to see the number of available seats on aircraft grow during the all-important third quarter of the year (July - September), which is the busiest in the aviation industry, compared to the same period during the pre-pandemic 2019. According to data compiled by “Air Service One”, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia will have their figures exceed those from four years ago. The biggest increase will be registered in Macedonia, the second highest in Europe, where capacity will grow 27.5% compared 2019. The main driving force will be Wizz Air, which has five aircraft based in Skopje. Also aiding the figures is the arrival of Lufthansa with its ten weekly service from Frankfurt, as well as Norwegian Air Shuttle which will commence operations from Oslo to the Macedonian capital on June 23.
Serbia will see its capacity levels increase 23.2% during the third quarter when compared to the same period in 2019, the third highest on the continent. It comes off the back of over twenty routes being launched by Air Serbia this summer, as well as new services by the likes of KLM, Luxair, Hainan Airlines and airBaltic which were not present on the market four years ago. Bosnia and Herzegovina will follow closely behind with its seat capacity growing 21.1% on the same period in 2019. On the other hand, Croatia will see the number of available seats increase 2.9% on four years ago.
Capacity levels in Montenegro and Slovenia will not reach pre-pandemic levels this summer, with the latter to record the second biggest decrease in available seats in Europe, exceeded only by the sanction-hit Belarus. The Ukrainian market has not been included as it will have no capacity in Q3. Montenegro will register a 25.7% decrease in available seats, primarily due to the loss of both the Russian and Ukrainian markets which made up a large portion of its operations during the summer months. Slovenia’s capacity levels will decline 44.9% during the busiest part of the year, with Ljubljana Airport still feeling the impact of Adria Airways’ collapse. The former Slovenian flag carrier declared bankruptcy in late September of 2019.
Overall, at this point, Europe has 393.6 million available seats during the third quarter, which is 96.2% of Q3 2019. Albania will see the biggest capacity growth in Europe on four years ago with a 112.9% increase, generated primarily by Wizz Air’s rapid expansion in Tirana. Of Europe’s top ten largest markets, five have exceeded pre-pandemic levels, led by Greece, Turkey and Portugal.
Very good results
ReplyDeleteWhere is the capacity growth coming from in Bosnia?
ReplyDeleteSarajevo has a lot of new flights to Middle East and Tuzla and Banja Luka have more traffic.
DeleteOMO has more flights too.
Delete^ compared to 2019 they don't
DeleteYes in 2019 Mostar also had scheduled Eurowings flights.
DeleteAt least Croatia Airlines is back.
DeleteThe results for Slovenia are depressing. I hope we finally get off the bottom of all European aviation lists.
ReplyDeleteWould be important to note the base number for some of these countries which was likely very low so percentile growth is higher
ReplyDelete+1
Deleteuhm 2019 was a record year for some of them
Delete^ It was a record year for both. But for example, if you had 1 million seats in 2019 and your number jumps to 1,2 million in 2023, your growth is 20%. But if you had 5 million seats in 2019 and your numbers grow to 5,4 million your percentage increase is 8% even though you actually added much more seats than the first example. That's the difference.
DeleteCould have been even larger in MKD if the government didn't play games with the last tender and awarded subsidies in time for summer 2023.
ReplyDeleteAnd Wizz hasn't scheduled those new routes for winter either.
DeleteThey will soon
Delete@9.09 this is about Q3
DeleteIt means that Macedonia's growth will be significant in Q4 too.
DeleteNice, good job
ReplyDeleteThe growth in Albania is crazy
ReplyDeleteWizz, huge diaspora and developing tourism industry
DeleteRyanair coming very soon 😉
DeleteDoubt Varadi will give his ''approval'' to Ryanair arrival.
DeleteAgree, it will be same scenario like in SKP.
DeleteVaradi's approval is not needed. TIA's new management is very ambitious. O'Leary himself is in Tirana yesterday and today for the final negotiations and it's going pretty well. That's all I will say
DeleteO'Leary was in Seattle yesterday in order to announce the 300 737-10 order. It seems difficult for him to be in both places at once, so I highly doubt that he was in TIA.
Delete@09:38 Michael O’Leary announced yesterday with Boeing CEO a massive MAX order! It’s all over the news. So no way he was Tirana yesterday!
DeleteHow many aircraft does Wizz have based in TIA.
Delete9 right now and 10 from July
DeleteAnd they just announced new destinations today: Bremen, Thessaloniki, Valencia
DeleteAnon 09:38 Yes there were Ryanair representatives, but obviously not the CEO himself. No need for misinformation
DeleteWould have been nice to have a leisure destination from SKP by Wizz.
ReplyDeleteNot gonna happen while conditions for subsidies are year-round operations (not seasonal only) and must continue for 3 years beyond subsidies. With these conditions expect VFR routes only.
DeleteAlso, at this point airlines are penalised if they open routes without subsidies *facepalm
Since subsidies are never ending, airlines better wait for the next round of subsidies. Otherwise, they put themselves at a disadvantage.
penalized? what are you on about? btw those subsidies are the smallest in the region ...
DeleteI'm happy that Lufthansa is contributing to Skopje's numbers. Any idea how the new route is performing?
ReplyDeleteI think they are doing just fine based on the airplane type (A319), they sent the bigger one (A320) only twice I think but I do expect that during summer time we might be seeing A320 more often. Nevertheless, having one and sometime two daily flights to FRA is great achievement for SKP
DeleteGreat to hear
DeleteI was expecting Croatia to have larger capacity growth, especially with Ryanair's base in Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteSame
DeleteThe long-haul market in Zagreb was huge and it has not been replaced. Emirates sent a 777 daily, Qatar was double-daily, there was Korean Air with wide-bodies etc.
DeleteThat's true, I forgot about that.
DeleteIn order Croatia, and particularly ZAG, to have bigger growth, markets of Far East and Australia should fully recover, and former long haul services re-introduced and new ones opened, as the poster above already noted. Ryanair and new incentives will help for sure as well to have some growth. But the growth will not be significant, or even sufficient, as long as national flag carrier OU remains pathetic feeder and humiliated LH servant, with the fleet of 13 aircraft and network of 16 international and alltogether 20 destinations, not doing its job of connecting Croatia within the country and with both european and distant markets, but helping improving numbers in MUC and FRA instead
Delete@pozdrav at least croatia by far has the most passengers, thats still very significant and that will grow more. maybe things will improve slowly for the national airline after the arrival of the A220's
Delete@Slav.man
DeleteNothing will improve with A220, it can only be worse. They are not getting additional aircraft, they are changing 319/320 for 220, so higher capacity to lower capacity aircraft. They are changing their OWN aircraft with aircraft they will lease, which will just make huge additional costs, and savings in operational costs will not be enough to cover lease costs. They need to change their feeder strategy, their incompetent and corrupt management and excessive work force, before the aircraft type. And yes, Croatia has by far the most passengers, and it's not even close to its potentials, and that's why Croatia Airlines like this, with less than 15 % in market share, is not just tragedy, it's treason
Ex-Yu markets are on fire this summer
ReplyDeleteExcept for Slovenia
DeleteIn time Slovenia will recover too
Delete@9:25:
DeleteSure it will. :D Let’s wait another 10 years or so, I’m sure eventually will get to a point were we once were.
Bravo Fraport
DeletePretty good result for Serbia if you take into consideration the loss of capacity by Russian airlines
ReplyDeleteIt will grow even more when JU gets third widebody.
DeleteGoes to show how important the Russian market was for Montenegro
ReplyDeleteOf course, it made up over 50% of Tivat's passenger numbers and that's just nonstop flights from Russia.
DeleteCollapse of Montenegro Airlines probably also has an impact.
DeleteSlight, yes
DeleteThe Russians are still here.
DeleteThey just fly now east to Turkey where they have only from Antalya to Moscow four daily 777s flights with Turkish !
Not counted the dozens of daily flights with narrowbodies .
Actually Montenegro is giving all the money to Turkey .
That i call solidarity ..
They are still travelling but obviously not in such big numbers anymore to Montenegro.
DeleteThose Russians who are travelling these days, usually aren't tourists but fleeing mobilization or the regime in general.
DeleteMajority of them are in Georgia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, some in Serbia or several other countries which don't require visas for Russians such as; Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia.
Don't know what the Montenegro policy in that regard is, but in any case you can't expect those Russians to travel back and forth because most of them have left Russia long-term, or forever.
Nice!
ReplyDeleteThis gives pretty good indication of how big the passenger growth will be compared to 2019.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI'm still surprised by Macedonia's growth considering Ohrid has lost traffic and there are no QR or FZ in Skopje.
ReplyDeleteThey had very few frequencies.
DeleteRemember that Wizz has upgraded a lot of its equipment to the A321.
DeleteHow many A321s are now based in Skopje?
Deletefive and one of them is A321 neo (239 seats)
DeleteOhrid: it did lose some but it also gained some, most if not all OHD's Wizz routes are flown with non-SKP based aircraft => more capacity for SKP routes
DeleteWell done. All off them have really impressed a lot this year
ReplyDeleteNice to see
ReplyDeleteNow to see if all those seats can actually be filled
ReplyDeleteDemand should be good this summer
DeleteWe will see
DeleteCurrent passenger numbers indicate that demand is strong. No need for gloom and doom.
DeleteHow many airport in ex-Yu are already above pre-Covid?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/04/former-yugoslav-airports-handle-44.html
DeleteAlmost all main airports
DeleteI'm just sad for Slovenia
ReplyDeleteDon't cry for me
DeleteDont cry for me Slo-Ve-Nia ..!
Delete:(
DeleteNumbers seem to be ahead of global trends.
ReplyDeleteWell they are top growers in Europe.
DeleteKeep in mind that Croatia has the most capacity out off all the markets in ex-Yu.
ReplyDeleteAnd flag carrier which participate with 15 % market share out of the mentioned most capacity, with domestic PSO included, which makes it actually some 10 % of the open market share, which is disaster, tragedy and treason
DeleteTrue, many lost opportunities for national carrier.
DeleteThats not treason, that is Danke Deutschland mentality .
DeleteCroatias national disease ..
No, Croatian people are hard working and proud. The market was not sold by Croatian people because of their mentality, but by dirty scumbags, politicians and their puppets, for their own benefits. That's treason. Ranks Deutschland mentality is when "analyst" on the other blog does not admit it to be treason and keep silent about it
DeleteNot ranks, danke
DeleteAre charters included in overall capacity figures?
ReplyDeleteWizz Air will not have 6 jets from SKP this summer.
ReplyDeletethis is what i was figuring out as well, what is this based on. Asking as a fanboy
DeleteIdk maybe they will make changes to the schedule today, but there is nothing on their website yet, also i found out that they decreased Charleroi from four to three times per week. If u ask me, there are no changes of WZZ in SKP since 2019, they terminated Turku, Billund Hannover, Barcelona, Turin, Salzburg and Larnaca till now, and now they will launch 4 new routes, but yet the number of routes from SKP remains the same, the only good thing they did is that they increased the flights on some routes, even though Malmo was operating 7 times per week, Gothenburg 5 times per week and London 5 times per week in 2019.
DeleteAlso if BCN could have worked in 2017, for sure it would have worked now in 2023, such a shame that we dont have air coonection with Spain. And many people are using Sofia or TIA for Spanish vecations. WZZ is consentraited to the diaspora only. Also, they have lack of crew in SKP cuz their salaries are small, around 700 euros.
Deletefrequencies are generally increased (Memmingen Dortmund to daily , Basel 10 weekly ... and many others)
DeleteNumbers confirm Serbia market is again adding more seat capacity than any other ExYu market.
ReplyDeleteSerbia added more than twice: 1.5 million seats, North Macedonia 740 thousand seats over 2019 numbers.
DeleteYes that makes sense but in percentile terms Macedonia comes on top because its base number is smaller.
DeleteI can imagine if next year SKP get Dubai and Doha , then it will be booom , but they will have good numbers too and this year which is good recover , and I think there will bekre routes , I think Wizz will get back some of the old routes maybe Barcelona , Hanover , Larnaca , and probably we can see SKP - Madrid flights maybe Iberia or some low cost carrier.
ReplyDeleteAnd for Ohrid also I think with Amsterdam and Manchester flights they will be successfully too , especially in summer period , where Ohrid expect to get back the old tourist numbers like before Covid , and plus there will be new terminal building.
Iberia does not even fly to Belgrade which is the biggest market in the region .
ReplyDeleteSo how will they care about Skopje ?!
i noticed your comments at 16.48, 16.50 and 16.52 too ^^.
DeleteVery interested to see what Q4 will be like.
ReplyDeleteWith new Wizz routes starting in Q4, Macedonia's growth should continue.
DeleteInteresting, in Q2 it was Bosnia, then Macedonia, then Serbia.
ReplyDelete