Flydubai saw growth on both its Ljubljana and Zagreb service during the first three quarters of the year when compared to the same period in 2022, with the airline to add additional flights to the two cities in the coming period. The Dubai-based airline welcomed 42.561 passengers on board its Ljubljana flights, according to Slovenia’s Statistical Office, with an average cabin load factor for the entire six-month period standing at 69.8%. The carrier registered a 25.9% increase in the number of travellers handled when compared to 2022, while its average cabin load factor improved twelve points. Flydubai currently runs four weekly rotations to the Slovenian capital. From December 18, the carrier will increase frequencies to daily which will be maintained until January 14, after which flights will be reduced to five weekly before increasing again to daily from February 1 onwards.
Flydubai's Ljubljana passenger performance, Q1 - Q3, 2023
Flydubai handled 45.611 passengers on its Zagreb route during the first nine months of the year, according to the European Union’s Statistical Office. The figure is up 23.9% on last year but down 55.2% on the pre-pandemic 2019. However, back then Flydubai operated the service during the winter months, while Emirates took over from late March with its widebody B777 aircraft. Flydubai’s average cabin load factor on the route during the first three quarters of this year stood at 76.3%, up 6.6 points on 2022 and an increase of twelve points on 2019. The carrier plans to boost its Zagreb frequencies next summer to daily, up from five weekly this peak travel season.
Flydubai's Zagreb passenger performance, Q1 - Q3, 2023
Emirates discontinued flights to Zagreb in 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the airline said that while it is recovering quickly from the pandemic and capacity should return to pre-Covid levels next year, no final decision has been made concerning its Zagreb flights. “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 said.
How so? Zagreb have better average LF than Ljubljana?? How to explain that? That's scandalous! Maybe slovenians are still avoiding Lju airport and travel intead from Zagreb? 😱
ReplyDeleteLJU is quite chaotic, during the holidays (for example now for Christmas) the flights are full, while the rest of the time we have low frequencies and good LF, ZAG is the same throughout the year.
Deleteis it visa on arrival for uae residents
DeleteI can definitely confirm that DXB from LJU has both transfers and solid local demand to Dubai.
ReplyDeleteZAG on the other hand is mainly a transfer, good to see them working well alongside LJU.
yeah? what is your source?
DeleteBacanje graha. Pa cita.
Delete@09:57 Source trust me bro
DeleteInteresting. Winter was better performing in LJU, while summer is better performing in ZAG.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of makes sense. More tourists going to Croatia druing the summer.
Delete* during
DeleteTourists from China, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, Japan
DeleteIf I'm not mistaken Zagreb had less flights past winter than Ljubljana, so there is a gap...
DeleteAre these really long flights, over 6 hours? Not exactly a long haul, but still...
ReplyDeleteFor Analitičar they are.
DeleteFZ is over 6 hours to LJU, to ZAG is ~5.50. DOH is 5 hours.
DeleteWell, we from this region can boast of something distant like the Romanians, the Poles, the Czechs (I'm talking about distant sunny destinations).😁😉
DeleteLJU have and other as Faroe, Madeira, Ponta Delgada
DeleteI saw a charter with Trade Air to Rovaniemi, but you also had a flight from ZAG with Sundair on December 8th. Are these tourists? (ZAG)
DeleteFZ flies to places like Poznan, now that's one long flight on 737!
DeleteI am impressed by how close LJU and ZAG numbers are. Only goes to show how much hidden potential LJU has.
You just tend to forget that Zagreb has also Qatar airways.
Delete09:31
DeleteLast year OU had a flight to Lapland, these are probably tourists again but this time with Sundair.
10:06 - tend to forget zagreb is bigger
DeleteFZ increased ZAG to 6 weekly from February,and daily from April. Also,next winter are already set as daily in system
ReplyDeleteIt took Fraport forever to discover Dubai as a destination in LJU. The route is only 2 years old and now enjoying daily flights in the peak season and we are talking about a smaller country in terms of population. If 5W ever decide to launch AUH-LJU, they will probably not fail. The Wizzair division is apparently doing more than great in AUH. 2 weekly would be great!
ReplyDeleteGood result for both airports.
ReplyDeleteReally hope EK comes back to Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteI thought it would happen until recently, when Flydubai ordered Dreamliners. With Flydubai operating Dreamliners, with ZAG seasonality, and ZAG losing cargo, now I doubt it would happen ever again.
DeleteYeah its clear EK wont come back…
DeleteZagreb is not seasonal, you could notice it by now. Zagreb is the only real airport in Croatia, all others can be closed down on November 1st until April 1st, and nobody would have noticed.
DeleteHe wrote seasonality not seasonal…
DeleteHahahaha... Of course Croatia has many strong airports. You can just write what you want. If Split, Zadar or Dubrovnik should close during the winter, what to say about Niš, Tivat, Banja Luka?
DeleteThanks for the numbers.
ReplyDeletehow is 69.8% LF on LJU-DXB a good number
ReplyDeleteThey have a lot of cargo plus business is always full…
DeleteIt is an average for the entire year. For a route that has been operating for just 2 years, it is good.
DeleteWould be interesting to see load factor in premium cabin for both
DeleteThat is a bad LF
DeleteThat is a bad LF for an airline like Wizz or Ryan
Deletethey handled almost the same number of passengers on both routes.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see end of the year numbers. Who will perform better in terms of pax. It might happen that Ljubljana will have slightly more pax (since winter is stronger than summer)
DeleteImportant thing is passenger numbers are growing on both routes
ReplyDeleteApart from the cabin load factor, Zagreb has Qatar too. So Flydubai performance is very good.
ReplyDeleteIt only shows that many ppl that were using zagreb are now using Ljubljana. I see quite often ppl from Pula flying from Ljubljana.
DeleteWell FlyDubai had better LF at Skopje then in ZAG and LJU. They handled around 27k pax per year to SKP on two weekly flights which is a LF of around 75%. I know that they have more flights to both ZAG and LJU then in SKP as well as more pax in total, i am just talking about the LF.
ReplyDeleteLF means absolutely nothing. It has to do with yields. You can have 100% LF by selling tickets for 1 euro but the airline will have massive losses.
Deleteimagine Ljubljana or Zagreb on 2 weekly flights ... LF would be 99,99%
DeleteSKP was unable to barely sustain 2 weekly FZ flights to DXB before C19, when the route was launched a couple of years ago, let alone daily flights as it is the case with LJU:
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/p/flydubai-dubai-skopje.html
They had "plans" to return more than 2 years ago:
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2021/11/flydubai-plans-skopje-return.html
It seems that the diaspora in Australia found new alternatives to visit their families, plus don't forget that Australia kept its lockdown much stricter than Europe and it affected many businesses. Now that the Asian market is gradually recovering, they may return in 1-2 years.
Checking online, it seems NMK, BiH and Moldova are the very few remaining countries in Europe, still requiring a visa to enter UAE, which I think is quite surprising:
https://www.visitdubai.com/en/plan-your-trip/visa-information
Visas have always been an issue, this is why many countries now simply adopted and applied e-visas, which is way much better. After all, it's all about the money.
Plus, there is no real "activity" between NMK and UAE. Many Serbians began travelling there frequently, now are the Slovenes and Croatians. In summer, traditionally BiH holds the "Gulf crown", etc.
I am the guy who wrote the first comment about this, So, 17:44 yes the LF would be 100% then, thats why i said what i said in the comment. 17:48 IF flydubai couldnt fill up two weekly flights then the LF wouldnt be 75% to SKP but much less, even though idk why they still havent returned considering the number of pax per year (27k) werent so little. 17:02 We all know that they didnt sold the tickets for 1 euro, i remember one way flight or maybe return one was around 560 euros, so the price was the same as it was for any other route of Flydubai in the region at that time.
DeleteAll in all, if the route was succsesful in 2012 i am sure it would be in the future as well. Many people from Australia used TK this year with two stops, one in Jakarta, Singapore or Manila or Hong Kong and another one in Istanbul.
In 2019 there were 24.270 passengers on DXB-SKP. That would get you LF of around 65%. QR had even worse LF than that (around 55%)
DeleteThis SKP guy again 🤣
DeleteAh the smiley guy again
DeleteWhat are you talking about?? How is 75% LF in SKP better than the one in both LJU and ZAG when ZAG had a LF of 76.3%?
DeleteLol, in 2019 it was even lower than LJU with a lot more flights
DeleteLF is important but you can still sell half of the plane for the price of 1 or 1,5. Nobody is saying SKP does not have the potential, but experience in the past has shown there is little demand or small market for the Gulf. Qatar left SKP just when Covid hit in March 2020 and yes, they have an Airbus shortage in the fleet and decided to switch to the Maxes, but for almost 4 years not decided to return is obviously for some reason. In previous comments, the admin has stated that 62% of QR traffic to SKP are transfers from Australia and only 10% from FZ, but that was OAG data from 2019.
DeleteOn the other hand, if you remember, they put tickets on sale and were due to start last October 2023:
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2022/12/flydubai-plans-skopje-return-after-over.html
And this never happened. FZ has no shortage of aircraft and currently launching more new routes in Asia and increasing frequencies right-left. So, something odd is preventing them to relaunch SKP. And if LJU (and ZAG) have such strong numbers is simply because there is demand and precisely in winter when UAE is perfect to visit. Still, SKP now has LH at least which is a much more important airline than FZ in terms of its size and immense Wizzair market share.
Perhaps SKP may be considered for October 2024 (although FZ are selling tickets as far as December 2024 already). SKP is currently sold on their website with a JU codeshare via BEG, but the connection times (nearly 9 hours) are way too long and the whole journey takes 15 hours unless you want to visit BEG or have some work or whatever because it is during the early morning.