Commercial airports across the former Yugoslavia handled a combined total of over 28.89 million passengers during the January - October period. Among them, Belgrade positioned itself within the top 75 busiest in Europe, with the remaining airports outside of the top 100. A total of twelve airports registered their best passenger performance on record during the ten-month period. They include Belgrade, Split, Zagreb, Pristina, Skopje, Podgorica, Zadar, Tuzla, Banja Luka, Niš, Osijek and Kraljevo. Notably, during October, Tuzla Airport continued to be impacted by Wizz Air’s base closure, and is now unlikely to surpass its passenger record from 2019.
Passenger performance by airport, January - October 2023
During the January - October period, Belgrade Airport ranked 73rd busiest on the continent, just behind Malta, Seville and Keflavik (Reykjavik), but ahead of Glasgow, Sofia and Thessaloniki. Split positioned itself as the 109th busiest, between Stavanger in Norway and Rome Ciampino, while Zagreb took 114th place. It was behind the likes of Trondheim, Wroclaw and Paphos but ahead of Tbilisi, Olbia and Santiago de Compostela. Pristina was 118th on the list, behind Verona but ahead of Kos, London City and Cluj. Skopje ranked 129h, trailing Poznan, Chisinau and Cork but immediately ahead of Memmingen, Dubrovnik and Ponta Delgada.
Passenger performance by airport, October 2023
During the first ten months of year, the Slovenian market saw the third-largest percentile decline in passenger figures in Europe (excluding Ukraine), behind only sanctioned-hit Belarus, as well as Finland, when compared to the pre-pandemic era with numbers down 29.6%. On the other hand, Albania recorded the fastest percentile growth, amounting to 111.8%, according to Airports Council International Europe, and was ahead of Armenia with a 66% increase. The market in Kosovo grew 44.3%, the Serbian market registered 25.3% growth, the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina was up 29.9%, Macedonian 15.6%, Croatian 1.8%, while the Montenegrin market saw its figures decline 7% on the same period in 2019. Notably, many markets in Europe are yet to recover their pre-pandemic figures with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Switzerland all below pre-Covid levels. Overall, London Heathrow Airport was the busiest in Europe between January and September, handling 66.3 million passengers, ahead of Istanbul’s main gateway, which was second with 64.4 million travellers. They were followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam, Madrid, Frankfurt, Barcelona, London Gatwick, Rome Fiumicino and Antalya.
Rank of select European airports by passenger numbers in the region
Largest airlines by scheduled seat capacity across the former Yugoslavia, October 2023
I’m astonished that Timisoara had more passengers in October than Sarajevo and Ljubljana!
ReplyDeleteBig market, Wizz base
DeleteDidn't know that. Will have a look. Thanks
DeleteYes but Wizz is slightly reducing TSR this winter
DeleteYou’ll be surprised by reductions happening next year. Wizz is hit bad by the PW issues.
DeleteTSR reductions were announced before engine issues
DeleteSo around 31-32 million pax in ex-Yu in 2023.
ReplyDeleteSad
DeleteSad or not, 12 airports are having a record year. They should be congratulated.
DeleteFinally Slovenia is no longer the second worst performing market in Europe! It is now third worst. Great success. Thanks Finland
ReplyDeleteWhat happened in Finland
Delete^ the war in Ukraine and closure of Russian airspace. It impacted Finnair's Asian operations. They are now making money fron wetleasing planes to Qantas and operating Doha flights from Scandinavia for Qatar Aireays.
DeleteFinnair spent decades turning HEL into a transfer hub. We will have to wait and see what they do in the next 2-3 years as I doubt the airspace will open before then.
DeleteSome kind of consolidation is due in Scandinavia, which every country of 4-5million having their own carrier
DeleteWell there is SAS which serves as national airline of 3 countries (but favours one of them 😀)
DeleteIn theory, Finnair and Aegan can form some kind of a joint venture or partnership and try to direct far east passengers from HEL hub which is not functional anymore due to well known reasons to ATH hub. Both airlines are in similar size and have similarly developed hubs. ATH and Aegan are lucking long haul so Finnair in theory cloud fill the gap and base their long haul fleet there for far east routes.
DeleteOr link with AirSerbia and keep on flying through Russia?!
DeleteTheir government screwed them completely.
^ What are you on about?? How can they "link with Air Serbia" and fly through Russia?
DeleteFunny because JU doesn't even use Russian airspace for their China flights
Delete12:41 Well I guess they should fly wingtip to wingtip, and passengers should run from one plane to the other one?
DeleteFinland has chosen to be collateral instead of neutral in new cold war. So any kind of Russian frenzy inside of Finland is considered betrayal. But even for neutral countries like Serbia your lessor and insurer will not allow you to overfly Russia so no. But as is war will last for next 10 years and if they want to have far east market they will need to adapt by getting rid of part of the fleet (consolidate) or simply use other EU hub, and ATH fits perfect. But looks like Fins are stubborn, and eventually flying for other airlines will dry out.
DeleteJU has no reason with overflying Russia. They don't do it because it's not worth paying Siberian overflight rights to make the flight ten minutes shorter.
DeleteMinsk is a similar case as LJU. Transfer airport lost their transfers. Now they are p2p airports.
ReplyDeleteSo you are claiming that embargo of all flights and operators from EU is similar case than Ljubljana? Nice try, but not the best excuse of bad LJU performance…
DeleteNo but they both lost transfers… one cuz of the war one cuz of collapse of airline
DeleteMinsk was 3 million transfers and Ukrainian workers in Belarus. LJU had over 300,000 transfer passengers.
DeleteMinsk has low local demand, p2p is about 2 million, it's always that much... European destinations are missing.
DeleteLJU needs more European destinations.
LJU needs MAD ASAP!!
DeleteIt's coming soon
DeleteHopefully
DeleteWill be interesting to see how next year pans out with all these new routes.
ReplyDeleteWe are in december last year Air Serbia announced a lot of new routes . Perhaps this year is different
Delete^ I don't know how many times the CEO of the airline has to say that in 2024 focus will be on frequencies and not on new routes (they added over 40 in 2 years). Last year they announced new routes during December. Today is 1 Decenber so calm down.
DeleteNew routes next year will mainly focus on transfer traffic since all P2P destinations with demand have been covered.
DeleteThere will be no new routes in 2024 because many pilots left. You will see. Mark my words.
DeleteThere are always wet lease alternatives.
DeleteThey might open few new routes.
They can't find affordable ones. Don't forget that they won't have two Lithuanian 738s in summer.
DeleteOK, they will then go for some less affordable and problem solved.
DeleteFor pilots I don't worry at all as the market is absolutely global. With more money they can get je pilots over the night. Problem is to hire and train other crew, maintenance, ground stuff etc.
They are training new pilots as we speak. Yesterday one of Air Serbia's planes was flying circles around Belgrade as part of pilot training.
DeleteProblem is that other airlines are offering unreasonably high salaries for pilots.
DeletePlus better work conditions
DeletePegasus coming to ZAG, January 18th, 2pw! Finally!
Delete7,6? Beg in 2023?
ReplyDeleteYes, seems like it. Much better than the originally estimated 7 million
DeleteI would say between 7,7 and 7,8 million
DeleteI find Belgrade strange in November. It seems impossible to me that it had barely over 300,000?
DeleteOf course not.
DeleteThe point was that BEG had its 7 milionth passengers during the middle of the November, but the director was not present at that time so they made a photo and announced the news at the end of the month after he returned.
I think last November there were 456.000 passengers so this year numbers should be well over 500.000. BEG should not be below 7.2 by the end of November.
DeleteDefinitely handled 7th millionth passenger much earlier than they took the photo promo. We will see the November result soon enough.
DeleteHow much did BEG have in 2019 During Jan-Oct?
Delete6.8
Delete^ They had 6.1 million for whole of 2019 and you are claiming they had 6.8 until October 2019...
DeleteOh I thought he meant this year
DeleteI still don't get how OU is 12% below 2019 capacity. Literally all airlines are back to preCovid levels.
ReplyDeleteObsession with OU goes on, and on, and on...
DeleteBecause once COVID passed OU had to deal with FR. Ryanair has a much better cost structure so they are slowly eating them alive. The way I see it is like when a Komodo dragon attacks its prey with his dirty, infectious saliva. Day by day the prey becomes weaker until it's too weak to fight. By now it's obvious OU doesn't have an answer to FR.
DeleteThat is why OU struggles while ZAG grows.
@9.40 obsession? I'm just observing the table at the end of the article
DeleteOU results are so terrible that he has no other answer except that pathetic one.
DeleteSimply do not pay any attention on that.
OU serves a different purpose that many here don't understand. Not all is about fleet size and PAX. no, whose is bigger, it has to do witj a bigger picture. Not surprised that people coming from a country with no tourism don't get it.
DeleteYes that is why OU's share is growing on the coast. Oh wait...
DeleteWhat is the bigger picture? It produces massive losses year after year . If your going to mention winter connectivity it does absolutely nothing. And don't bring your nationalistic assumptions into it. Not being able to argue your point without insulting based on what you assume is someone's background says a lot about you.
Delete+100
DeleteLet's see who dominates the coast next year. EW just announced a whole bunch of summer destinations but nothing in HR
DeleteThe bigger picture is, OU brings a lot of tax money for the state budget and pension funds, a lot more than they cost. Much more than they cost. Get it?
DeleteIt would be interesting to see any proof to back up your claim. For example, how much in taxes did they pay last year and how much aid, PSOs and public money from state owned airports was given to them through various advertising deals, route incentive deals, tourism incentive deals etc.
DeleteCommon sense. I know it's absent here. Just a bunch of haters that pretend to be aviation enthusiast. We got nothing to prove to you people.
DeleteWhenever you are presented with a question, you run for nationalistic insults because you have no answer. As I said before, says everything about you.
DeleteAnon 13:01 If OU brings a lot of tax money for the state budget and pension funds, a lot more than they cost, then imagine how much more tax money leading flag carrier of ex Yu region brings in. In other words, those who use this approach to justify OU's existence are actually supporting JU's existence even more!
DeleteI have no problem with JU. All I'm saying is that there is a lot of added value. Nothing nationalistic in my posts, just a point that to me JU is irrelevant. I prefer to draw comparisons with other EU member states.
DeleteAdmin,
ReplyDeleteIn the text you have typo that BEG is on 75th position in Europe.
It seems that 73rd position is correct as you have it in 2 spreadsheets below the text.
It's not a typo, it says it is within the top 75, which is from 1 to 75 since it is 73rd.
DeleteImpressive growth by most airports! Sarajevo and Ljubljana could do better though.
ReplyDeleteCroatian airports have the most passengers in total, as always.
ReplyDeleteWith terribly low OU market share.
DeleteTerrible, in your view or not, but still much more!
DeleteTerrible, terrible, terrible! Yet each year is a record for Croatian Airports. Because it has never been more than this. Yet some here speak as if there should be tens of millions flocking....
DeleteTotal passenger traffic of CRO airports is often used to distract from every other failure of OU.
DeleteNo, every topic on this site is used to trash OU, even a good story like this. When the 15 arrive, many here will die from envy!
DeleteI think Ljubljana could reach 1.6 million next year, which is close to the Adria numbers. Which means that with Adria it could easily reach 2.5-2-8. A lot of destinations are still missing, and connections are gone, no idea if ANYONE connected through Ljubljana since Adria collapsed
ReplyDeleteI doubt there is. What could people connect onto?
DeleteI agree LJU could reach 1.6 million next year. Don't I know why management thinks that figure will be achieved only in 2026.
DeleteLjubljana is a lost case. Waiting on Godot.
DeleteLjubljana - waiting on Godot.
DeleteVery good result by Tesla. Hopefully this growth continues into 2024 so that we can be in the category 60 to 69 busiest European airports.
ReplyDeleteHopefully Wizz's pilot hiring spree in Belgrade is an indication that they plan on growing at BEG.
Good news is that BEG is not relying so much on gasto traffic especially now when the EU economy is in stagflation.
+1
DeleteWhat is there left for Wizz to open? Literally everything has been covered. In their last expansion they opened all already existing routes from BEG.
DeleteWizz can start boosting frequencies on existing routes. Basically continue what they started this winter. We already got the first increase for 2024 (BGY from 5 to 7). I think they can still launch Madrid, Brussels, Prague, Athens...
DeleteI would think BCN can go more than daily in summer, maybe 9 like FMM.
Athens is in need of an LCC alternative. Vienna too (although it ain't gonna happen)
DeleteAthens will be launched sooner or later from Wizz.. The thing is that it can be launched by Sky Express too which is the LCC of Greece or BlueBird Airways which recently opened a base in ATH as things in Israel where they had a base are bad. They launched PRG, BER, HER, BUD, VIE from ATH i can see them fly to BEG too.
DeleteBut I feel that BEG-ATH will soon get a third carrier.
BEG does not have a lot of shining examples of three carriers sustainably serving the same route. Learn from this fact.
DeleteYes we really should learn from that fact.
DeleteI think now that you said it we all already learned from that fact!!! No third airlines for one route noted!
DeleteIn very curious in ZAG's numbers for next year considering the FR expansion.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty certain OU will expand next year too. It's interesting that FR didn't announce a singlrle route from the incentive destination list. So I think OU will open maybe Berlin and Prague from Zagreb in 2024.
DeleteHope so but wouldn't bet on it. They said how they will put focus on DBV next year. That's not looking great after Ryanair's announcement.
DeleteZAG being 114th in Europe is outright embarrassing and something needs to be done. Hopefully FR expansion changes that.
DeleteNew FR plane would have first to cover absence of Vueling and Finnair that were both flying last year and won't be returning to ZAG next year.
DeleteHow do you know that they won't be flying
DeleteThey would already have tickets on their website if they are going to fly.
DeleteWill Ljubljana overtake Sarajevo by the end of the year?
ReplyDeleteI guess not.
DeleteDefinitely not, Sarajevo will be ahead of Ljubljana this year. Especially next year when Ryan starts.
DeleteLjubljana has quite a few new routes too next year.
DeleteNo recovery in sight for Tivat unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteWorst impacted airport due to Ukraine war in our region.
DeleteThis BEG Terminal view is clearly beautiful 😍
ReplyDelete+1
DeletePristina now extending difference over Skopje.
ReplyDeleteNot quite. Earlier this year the gap between the two was growing by some 50k monthly. In October PRN experienced a massive growth of 20% yet the gap with SKP grew by only 25k! This is an indicator that SKP is catching up, and fast.
DeleteIndeed they have added some 300k more then PRN
DeleteMore is expected with Visa liberalization and extension of the Terminal
DeleteCrazy how many passengers wizz flew from Tuzla and they pulled out lol 550k
ReplyDeleteAnd what about Mali Lošinj and Portorož?
ReplyDeleteWhy Athens is not in the graphic while Thessaloniki and Bucharest are?
ReplyDelete