NEWS FLASH
Greece's national carrier Aegean Airlines commenced a three weekly service between Skopje and Sarajevo yesterday evening, through its regional subsidiary Olympic Air. It marks the resumption of flights between the two capital cities after more than thirteen years, when the now-defunct B&H Airlines maintained flights between the two. In addition to the new Skopje - Sarajevo service, Aegean has doubled its frequencies on the Athens - Skopje route from three to six per week. All flights will be maintained with the ATR72-600 aircraft.
Commenting on the new service, Nejat Kurt, the General Manager of Skopje Airport’s operator TAV Macedonia, said, "We are pleased that Aegean is increasing its presence on our market, with the launch of another new destination from Skopje besides Athens. We believe this new route will serve the needs of travellers and enable them to reach Sarajevo from Skopje quickly and comfortably in just a bit over an hour, rather than use ground transportation that takes long hours and is exhausting”. The General Manager of Sarajevo Airport, Alan Bajić, added, “It was out great pleasure to welcome the first Aegean flight from Skopje. We are especially pleased that the launch of this route comes as a result of joint and very successful cooperation between our two airports. We are excited that Aegean recognised the importance and potential of establishing this route as an excellent opportunity to improve cooperation in the fields of economy and tourism between North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am convinced that the relationship between Aegean and Sarajevo Airport will be long and successful”.
It would be great to read a trip report about this new route.
ReplyDeleteI agree. There aren't too many regional trip reports.
DeleteHow about the LF?
ReplyDeleteOn the photo ~15 peoples.
Delete13.45 dont play doumb and think this is a pic of all the passangers! do somenbody have the REAL lf?
DeleteI think the flight was full because a few days ago I went on their website and it said Tickets Sold Out
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DeleteI've just seen a huge banner down in Skenderija promoting the route in question.
ReplyDeleteThey are advertising everywhere. The ad appeared on my YouTube video or some portal article as well. They asked me to install their app first when I opened the link.
DeleteSkopje is growing ! Ljubljana last week, Sarajevo yesterday, Luxembourg in December, AirBaltic next year ! Nice achievement :D
ReplyDeleteIt is the second largest metropolitan area in our region.
DeleteIt's natural to grow.
Skopje second largest metropolitan area in the region? LOL. Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo.
DeleteYou stil not accepring that Sarajevo was always smaller then Skopje? Oh well
DeleteSarajevo was never smaller than Skopje, it reduced its administrative area after the war to be smaller than its urban zone which is odd. Skopje considers half of its country as its own territory, bigger than London by surface.
DeleteSarajevo je uvek bilo manje od Skoplja. Jos u vreme Juge, posle Beograda i Zagreba je bilo Skoplje pa tek onda Sarajevo.Uci malo geografiju.
DeleteMora da je neki klinac
DeleteA3 finally tapping into the SKP transfer market with their 6 weekly early morning departure/late afternoon arrival
ReplyDeleteFinally they do have an excellent network!
DeleteI wish ! More airlines would be more than welcomed, Ryanair for example to Prague, Paphos, Barcelona, EasyJet to Paris CDG/ORY and Amsterdam and so on
ReplyDeleteWhat about the other 3 days? Cant see them parked for 10 hours, dont think thats very common
ReplyDeleteWhen the airport gives you free parking and handling, it's not an issue.
DeleteSo lets park it all day because its free(?) instead of making money! WTF did i just read. Good that you will never manage an airline
DeleteWell i guess that they have calculated their profit from this schedule. But in Balkan everybody knows everything, thats why we will continue to go down and look at the past instead of looking forward.
DeleteCould it be that they planned or still planning to launch some other destination like Sarajevo and planned this 10h layover in Skopje?! Maybe they planned LJU, but Wizz was faster.
Delete@14:21 Aegean has proven that they know what they are doing. Plus some domestic routes are being taken over by Aegean which means they have additional planes from Olympic Air which are not needed for the time being.
DeleteActually this is not true. Aegean arrived yesterday at 17:55 in Skopje from Athens. At 19:00 it departed from Skopje to Sarajevo. At 22:00 it arrived in Skopje from Sarajevo. And today in 04:30 in the morning it departed from Skopje to Athens. So it was 6,5 hours in Skopje. Ussally a flight departs 1 hour after it landed so "5,5 hours of business" "wasted".
DeleteBut there are reasons for this. The staff in Athens started their shift at 15:30(ex yugo time) and it ended at 22:00 in SKP. After 6 hours of work you must have a break in the European union and honestly they need it. Besides that if they choose continue their shift would take 9 hours without a real break. Besides that it could be beneficial to wait so that passengers in SKP have better options from transfers in ATH from the morning wave. Actually Aegean is not the only one. JU waits 2 hours in Skopje, Austrian 4 hours and OU 5-6 hours and Wizz 6-7 hours. So nothing unuasal. U can't have a plane nonstop in business.
Lol compared to 10 hours???
DeleteIt is so strange they don't do overnights in SJJ so they can connect also SJJ pax to the waves in ATH. Why don't they just continue SKP-SJJ at 18:30 and then fly at 3:00 from SJJ now that SJJ allows night time ops. Crew rest in hotel close to apt 19h30-3am. Sure it's not ideal to fly at 3am but if u see it for transfers it should be ok for a market with limited legacy carrier coverage, giving you all possible new options for destinations towards the South and the East also from SJJ, not just SKP, two destinations with just 1 plane and crew.
Deletebecause this route is for p2p SKP-SJJ-SKP. there are enough passengers from Skopje to Athens alone
DeleteRyanair is very unlikely as much as I navivam da dojdat. They will never get their discount. If the LJU route is performing well PRG has a good chance, it has a similar profile
ReplyDeleteRyanair will never come to Macedonia because our market holds Wizz , I think more realistic scenario is that Wizz will launch new routes that already miss at SKP , for example Prague and Barcelona.. But its possible we see another airlines to introduce CGD or Amsterdam. I heard negotiations are also for Madrid , and of course returning od Doha and Dubai.
ReplyDeleteThey should just base one ATR at SKP ;)
ReplyDeleteSarajevo needs to be linked to many more cities
ReplyDeleteThey will have chance now to travel through SKP...
DeleteIt seems that SJJ has more flights in September this year compared to last year when Wizz Air had a base with two airplanes. I hope they know what they are doing. It's really nice to see that they are developing regional routes as well.
DeleteA3 is offering SJJ to ATH connections via SKP. I get the logic, but quite inconvenient for SJJ passengers to spend the night at SKP basically
ReplyDeleteDon't think more than 3 people per year would be willing to do that unless they make it really dirt cheap
DeleteIs there really enough pax for Skp to Sarajevo flight regularly? Imt pretty happy if there is
ReplyDeleteIt will rarely be very empty, however i bet it will rarely be very full too
Deletenew competition for JU and OU out of SKP for transfers and i mean the regular SKP-ATH link
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