Several destinations within Zagreb Airport’s top ten busiest surpassed their pre-Covid passenger performance during the first half of the year, data provided by the European Statistical Office shows. During the first six months, Frankfurt remained the airport’s busiest route, with 140.830 passengers handled jointly by Croatia Airlines and Lufthansa, although figures were still down 12.7% on the same period in 2019. Notably, the Lufthansa Group’s hubs within the top ten busiest - Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna - all failed to reach their pre-pandemic passenger figures. Zurich, which was the eleventh busiest, was also below pre-Covid levels. However, both Frankfurt and Munich were hit by industrial action in February, forcing the cancellation of a number of flights from Zagreb to the two German cities.
Zagreb Airport's busiest routes, H1 2023
Turkish Airlines performed strongly during the first half of the year, establishing Istanbul as Zagreb’s second busiest international route and improving its performance by a 24.3% on four years ago. The only other destination within Zagreb Airport’s top ten busiest to have surpassed its pre-Covid passenger performance during the first three months of the year was Amsterdam, operated by Croatia Airlines and KLM. Ryanair outperformed both Croatia Airlines and British Airways on flights to London. The budget carrier handled 58.120 travellers between the Croatian capital and Stansted Airport, while the two national airlines welcomed a joint total of 51.015 passengers on board their aircraft to and from Heathrow. Stansted is also Ryanair’s busiest Zagreb route with the carrier maintaining daily flights between the two.
During the six-month period, Zagreb Airport handled 1.693.512 travellers through its doors, representing its busiest first half to the year on record. Much of the growth was fuelled by Ryanair, which opened a base in the city in 2021. However, the pace of Zagreb Airport’s growth has slowed notably, with passenger numbers in May and June up 5.8% and 3.1% on 2019 respectively. The growth rate in July further slowed to under 1%. The softer growth is expected to continue into August and September, with more dynamic increases in passenger volumes expected from October onwards,
Frankfurt number 1;)))
ReplyDeleteAnd London combined No.2
DeleteI think Ryanair is impacting a lot of routes.
ReplyDeleteEspecially OU/BA on London route.
DeleteWell OU already moved one weekly flight this winter from ZAG to SPU. Obviously they feel they can't compete with BA and FR.
DeleteThey feel they can't compete against FR on any route. They are also discontinuing Zagreb-Dublin.
DeleteThey will operate four flights in October. Really strange
DeleteYes, and that's it. They then discontinue the route.
DeleteDublin will most likely come back in spring and summer
DeleteWhat the hell happened with Munich???
ReplyDeleteI am also interested. That's a big decrease. Doubt it Ryanair's Memmingen flight.
DeleteI think KLM and AMS happened. MUC is mostly for transfers so they moved to KLM.
DeleteI think FMM mostly affected buses from ZAG.
Also don't forget that Germany is experiencing economic decline so that's another factor.
MUC has lost a lot of its transfer appeal since Covid.
Delete^ why?
Deletelol at the @09.13 expert ... thats why LH will base 8 A380s at their MUC base.
DeleteMunich is mostly affected by the fact that it was decimated by Lufthansa during the pandemic, but it is slowly coming back and being developed again by LH.
DeleteEconomic decline? My word, the comments on here.
DeleteAnon 11:34 +100
DeleteMunich is affected by the fact that it was decimated by Lufthansa. Remember that the flights didn't even resume until last year.
DeleteOU continues to hold a large share of the market.
ReplyDeletePeople here frequently write bad things about OU, but in reality OU is very reliable carrier. For all my business trips I always use OU or their code share partners from Lufthansa group if there is no direct OU flight. When you are traveling from Zagreb to be honest OU is choice number 1.
DeleteOk but these figures show that fewer and fewer people rely on them and the LH group out of Zagreb.
Delete@09.28
DeleteIt's all about how you see it : you are one of OU's happy passengers. Of course there are people like you, after all OU carriers more than million passengers per year and I believe at least half of those are happy and satisfied. I never said OU was not reliable within the range of services it operates. They don't have excess delays, planes are decently maintained, clean, crew is in most of the cases friendly. That's what you see. What I see is : bigger fleet which is missing, much bigger network of destinations, which is missing, profitability (not during one quarter but overall), which is missing, incompetence and unwillingness of management to create airline which will not have 15 %but minimum 30 % of croatian market share, with decent PSO which will connect properly all parts of Croatia, and with ZAG which will become another hub for the Balkans offering plentiful OU connections (JU already created one in BEG, over few years only). So, if you still think, after this explanation, that I am one of the people who frequently write BAD things about OU, and if you think justified criticism and suggestion for improvement and growth coming from someone with 30 years of experience in aviation industry is BAD thing to do, then I will have no choice but to think that you do no business trips at all, and that your post is just another more elaborate way to advocate incompetence, theft and dominance of politics in OU. Have a nice day!
Hi Pozdrav, from a customer point of view I don't break my mind about OU's balance sheet, P&L account, cash flow or market share. I just wrote that OU is very reliable carrier that provides decent value for money. I know they carry much less customers than they can considering total amount of foreign visitors in Croatia, completely agree with you, but being a small company gives you a feeling that you are taken care off on the ground and in the air, that you are not just a number for them. When you try to give them a call they answer immidiatelly. They give their best to solve any problems. They pay compensations for delayed flights on time. As a client you have feeling they value your loyalty, money and time. That is fact and nobody can convince me in opposite. I am frequent flyer and I look from customer perspective, not as an auditor.
DeleteHave a nice day too.
And as I previously said, for the minimum operations they have, with smallest aircraft possible, on regional and feeding lines only, with low number of passengers, they provide professional service. I was never denying that. But I am happy that you share my opinion that they could and should have done much more. I do understand your point as a passenger, but I also hope you do understand mine : as aviation professional, it's really hard for me when I see LF of 56 %, market share of 15 %, shrinking when all others are growing, region (JU) included, making heavy losses all citizens need to pay for, incompetence, inertness, nepotism, political influence.....Actually I kind of envy you, because you see a bright side only. I wish I could do the same 😃 Best regards!
DeleteIf we count LH Group airlines, they have 8 destinations from Zagreb. Not bad.
ReplyDeleteWow Ryanair massacred both OU and BA on the London market. I assume the two of them combined don't have such a great LF. No wonder BA sends the A319 quite often to ZAG.
ReplyDeleteCould we see more than daily ZAG-STN flights next summer?
There are two daily fights on Tuesdays for three weeks around Christmas
DeleteTime for Ryanair to increase Zagreb-Stansted to 2 daily or at least 10 weekly.
DeleteThat would be the end of BA/OU
DeleteOU, probably yes. BA definitely not, due to North America transfers.
DeleteIt totally did. I wouldn't mind them increasing flights to STN next summer but would prefer if they brought back MAN...if both aren't an option.
DeleteOther than that Turkish is doing incredibly in Zagreb.
AMS had already started competing for transfers with FRA even before covid, but now there's a whole new reality in Europe. Not that long ago FRA was the third busiest airport in Europe, after LHR and CDG, and IST was number 4 or 5.
Quite a different picture nowadays.
It's charters for students who have finished school
ReplyDeleteCharter flights for school trips
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I wonder if the US transfers have shifted from Lufthansa.
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting point. Maybe the north america transfers moved away from Germany to Amsterdam and to Belgrade
DeleteI think people have shifted a lot to KLM.
Delete@9.34 and not to IST? lol
Delete@10.14. Amsterdam is on the correct path to Zagreb. and belgrade is short drive to zagreb. while usually the cheapest choice
Deletei dont see many flying to istanbul 2 hours longer flight past zagreb to then wait and then take a 2 hour flight back to zagreb.
I hope we eventually see a third daily flight on some days by TK.
ReplyDeletewow Munich not even near pre Covid numbers.
ReplyDeleteRyanair is doing very well on that Stansted route.
ReplyDeleteLooking at these numbers, they are probably doing well on all their routes because other airlines are not doing great.
DeleteDon't forget that there is no more STN-LJU which had around 120-130.000 passengers per year.
DeleteTK should really start Split, at least seasonally.
ReplyDeleteThey were talking about it a few years ago as their third route in Croatia.
DeleteAdmin, can you make Belgrade’s busoest routes by passengers? It would be interesting to see
ReplyDeleteBusiest*
DeleteThe info is not published
Deleteit was published last month or 2 months ago that Belgrade top 2 routes of the year were Zurich and close behind Istanbul.
Deletestrange how much istanbul has grown in both Zagreb and Belgrade since 2019. wonder whats fuelling the travel.
Combination of things. Cheap to visit Turkey (and coast) due to inflation, more Turkish workers in the region, more people transferring via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines flights due to reduced capacity by Gulf carriers,...
DeleteLH’s result is directly influenced by good results of KLM and TK. I wonder where is JU with they figures, did they improve from pre covid time (and took a small piece of the transfers).
ReplyDeleteThey have. It was published the other day
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/09/zagrebs-busiest-ex-yu-routes-skopje.html
With ZAG going almost triple daily maybe we finally see Belgrade in top 10
Deletei dont think so
DeleteFor that you would need bigger capacity.
DeleteAlso JU at Zagreb is predominately inbound.
Croats dont fly much to Belgrade, i guess they prefer driving.
So much?!
ReplyDeleteYes
ReplyDeleteGood job by Ryanair!
ReplyDeleteI think many of the P2P passengers migrated to Ryanair
DeleteYes, they stole many passengers.
Delete'Stole' lol
DeleteInteresting to see busiest routes. No major surprises among them.
ReplyDeleteThese figures mean Croatia Airlines is nowhere near to getting close to pre Covid passenger numbers in Zagreb which is a disaster considering most airlines have surpassed those figures.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteNo wonder TK has started sending wide bodies to Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteI assume that if there were no FR, Croatia Airlines would not have retreated so much from Zagreb.
ReplyDeletedefinitely
DeleteI wonder how many passengers on the LH hub routes are carried by Lufthansa and how many by Croatia Airlines
ReplyDeleteWhat is the number of passengers (and difference to 2019) for Zurich. You mention "Zurich, which was the eleventh busiest, was also below pre-Covid levels."
ReplyDelete41.791, down 20.7% on 2019.
DeleteThank you! Not great numbers though :/
DeleteYou are welcome, though keep in mind that Swiss operated flights to Zagreb at the time. During the first half of 2019 they had around 7.000 seats on the market.
DeleteWhat is missing here is the Capacity growth. FRA has fewer seats available than 2019 mainly because OU was using the Dash on most flights to FRA in th first three months of 2023 compared to 319/320 in 2019.
DeleteI'm surprised by Vienna being down so much considering Austrian is going to increase Zagreb a lot this winter. Maybe OU is the culprit for the decline?
ReplyDeleteOU changed its two daily ZAG-VIE flights into 1 daily ZAG-VIE + 1 daily SPU-VIE.
DeleteThis might explain the lower number of pax between ZAG and VIE, but might have pushed the number of pax between SPU and VIE.
This is very interesting to observe. TK has knocked out Lufthansa at the top in Ljubljana too.
ReplyDeleteLufthansa is still very much at the top in Zagreb.
DeleteSo probably, Dubrovnik is Croatia Airlines busiest route?
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteAnd how is that route performing in winter?
DeleteWell, obviously quite decent as jan to march are included in H1 period
DeleteDoesn't make much of a difference in terms of the airport's passenger numbers.
ReplyDeleteAny guess how August performed?
ReplyDeleteI guess less passengers than August 2019.
DeleteZagreb won't get Air Canada in 2024. Official.
ReplyDeleteIberia removed Zagreb from its destination list and at the same time we can't see anymore Zagreb being on Finnair or Vueling reservation system.
DeleteThey are afraid of Jasmin. They know once brand new shiny A220 fleet arrives, next year, OU is immediately starting Madrid, Helsinki and Toronto via Shannon, so they all just run away 😃
Delete^ Because Iberia is just seasonal !
DeleteOf course it is seasonal. I was talking about next summer.
DeleteNot to forget that Ryanairs bases at Zagreb and Zadar are cannibalising each other.
ReplyDeleteOf course not
DeleteOh well,yes!
DeleteI know many people that have homes in Zadar or on Pag island.
In the beginning they always flew into Zagreb and drove south.
Nowadays they always fly into Zadar because its more convenient.