Greek carrier Lumiwings has scheduled the opening of its Tuzla base with the launch of six new routes this December, which will grow to ten destinations next summer season. It comes after it won a tender for the introduction of new services from the city in return for subsidies. Starting December 18, the carrier will commence operations to Saarbrucken in Germany, Halmstad and Stockholm Skavsta in Sweden, Esbjerg in Denmark, Maastricht in the Netherlands, and Istanbul in Turkey although the latter is subject to regulatory approval. All routes will be maintained twice per week. Tickets are now available for purchase through Lumiwings’ website.
| Destination | Launch date |
|---|---|
| Halmstad | 18.12.2023 |
| Stockholm Skavsta | 18.12.2023 |
| Maastricht | 19.12.2023 |
| Esbjerg | 20.12.2023 |
| Saarbrucken | 20.12.2023 |
| Istanbul | TBA |
The Greek airline, which primarily operates within Italy, will station a 149-seat Boeing 737-700 in Tuzla. The new routes, which are primarily catered towards the diaspora, aim to replace part of Wizz Air’s network, after the budget carrier shut its base in the city this September and discontinued the majority of its flights, although it continues to operate three routes out of Tuzla with aircraft from other bases. “We negotiated with around thirty European airports and then selected the ones that offered the greatest discounts, so that ticket prices could remain affordable for our passengers. We are still awaiting official approval to change the designated carrier for the Istanbul route, since initially permits were given to Air Montenegro to maintain this service”, the General Manager of Tuzla Airport, Dževad Halilčević, said.
The Accountable Manager at Lumiwings, Dimitris Kremiotis, said the success of the carrier’s new Tuzla base depends on the diaspora. “In order to enable passengers to buy tickets at affordable prices for the upcoming winter holidays, we are offering fares starting as low as 75 euros for travel from December 18. We would like to inform passengers that tickets with such affordable fares will sell out quicky". Lumiwings has two aircraft in its fleet, with an Embraer E195 complementing its B737-700. This year the airline operated scheduled seasonal flights between Foggia and Mostar.
A shame they went with 737 and not E195... At least for the start where flights will be empty
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteThey will never fill a B737 to places like Halmstad and Esbjerg, ever.
DeleteI was looking at these places now because I had no idea about them. And Esbjerg Airport is only 42min away from Billund. If BLL worked for Wizz with good LF, than this Esbjerg could work too.
DeleteAnother Swedish town is half way between MMX and GOD. In between is Helsingborg. There are Bosnian gasto routes bus companies operating routes to Gothenburg with stops in all these small towns between Malmö and Gothenburg. So obviously there is a demand there as well. Also there were the times when Wizz did almost 10 weekly to GOT from Bosnia incl. TZL and SJJ flights. So I guess it's snot so much art to sell 250-280 tickets per week for the route especially if the tickets were cheap.
The were obviously scheduling flights just 3 weeks in advance and no doubt why these villages. But I assume intention is to move bigger Wizz villages in the future.
I think the choice of destinations is very good. Esbjerg for Denmark (over Copenhagen), Halmstad for Copenhagen and Malmö.
ReplyDeleteThe distance between Esbjerg and Copenhagen is almost the same as between Esbjerg and Hamburg (approx 300 km).
DeleteYes. That's right.
DeleteBut I mean Esbjerg is an alternative to Billund. And Halmstad is an alternative to Copenhagen and Malmö.
I haven't heard of half of these places. Esbjerg?
ReplyDeleteEsbjerg is alternative of Billund. Halmstad of Malmo and Copenhagen.
DeleteSecondary places - which is good as the routes are replacing LCC ones
DeleteThese are not secondary but tertiary destinations
DeleteEsbjerg and Halmstad Both have exactly one regular scheduled route. Their route Choice is hilarious.
DeleteTuzla was also an hilarious choice before ULCCs started to serve it.
DeleteSo we have no duplication with the new Ryanair flights. I'm glad we have Denmark again. I believe that these new routes will work.
ReplyDeleteSo we get Ryanair and Lumiwings as replacements for Wizz Air in TZL and SJJ. I wonder if we'll see any new destinations from Wizz in SJJ and Ryanair apart from the new ones they announced?
DeleteThe most important thing is already here! We have more flights to Sweden, again we have Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Italy. I hope for more new destinations in Germany. So the auctions turned out to be quite successful.
DeleteNew York as well
DeleteWith Southwest?
DeleteAllegiant
DeleteCanton Sarajevo prime minister said the other day that the new tender has been published with the same conditions and according to his knowledge EU carrier will apply with another 5 routes to the EU cities. My assumption is that they really know/promised something and that Wizz enters the battle with Ryanair now. They just can't let it go. I believe Varadi's feelings are hurt, even though market-wise it means nothing to them.
DeleteNorwegian, SAS and LOT have applied, as I heard.
DeleteIf it were me I would start with the E195. But at that time their base in Italy had a low LF for the 737 and so they took this E195. Hope LF in TZL is good.
ReplyDeleteLF will be between 5 and 15 percent in months like February. At max.
DeleteNot sure this will work with such an unknown airline. The choice of destinations makes it exclusively for diaspora, killing any chance of outbound travel from Bosnia for other purposes.
ReplyDeleteTickets will also not be LCC except for the first couple.
Good luck but I'm not sure it will last long.
So taxpayer money is being spent on the diaspora? This is beyond crazy
ReplyDeleteDiaspora is a big chunk of taxpayers and beyond
DeleteYet the diaspora is feeding Bosnia through remittances, taxation and money they bring when they return for holidays
DeleteDiaspora fed Bosnia 10+ years ago, Bosnia has enough young travelers to sustain itself
DeleteGuys...this won't end well.
ReplyDeleteI think TZL and LWI did it with LCC style but LEVEL MAX:
ReplyDelete1. find the smallest possible operational airport
2. still target the pax group
3. get best possible airport prices if possible 0 or close to 0
4. start flying but being HUMAN and offer glass of water, sweet, seat, bag for FREE
Sounds promising to me!
All that's left is passengers. And there won't be very many. This project is doomed.
DeleteAnon 10:44 +1000
DeleteTrecerazredna konpanija leti na yrecerazrednevaerodrome. Zabavno :)
ReplyDeleteCarriers from Greece are on fire on the Balkans
ReplyDeleteChoosing Saarbrücken out of all the airports in Germany shows where your journey is headed: into failure
ReplyDeleteit is stupid to compete with Wizz.. he is still flying Germany..maybe good idea later when WZz totally leave Tuzla
Delete5 more routes coming anyway
Scn won't work out for sure - it's not a replacement for anything, the catchment area is small, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, Luxembourg, parts of France with high density population are all too far away.
DeleteSaarbrücken actually just lost about 30% of its summer charter flights and is one of the few airports in Germany that are not recovering. It would have been the LAST choice in Germany. There are so many logical options as CGN, HAM, DUS but they went with SCN which doesnt even have the slightest of a catchment area ahahahahahahahah.
DeleteFlew with Lumiwings last year. Nice crew, plane was in good condition.
ReplyDeleteOh my god this is the craziest and dumbest route choice I have seen in a really long time.
ReplyDeleteThis will result in absolutely nothing but a tremendous failure.
Launching Tuzla - Esbjerg on a B737 three weeks ahead on an airline that something between 99,8 and 99,9% of the people have never heard of is fucking crazy.
Esbjerg could actually work, it serves the whole Danish mainland / peninsula plus Odense/Fyn Island, basically whole Danmark except Kopenhagen area but can also serve part of Germany (Schleswig-Holstein federal state). But 2pw would habe been enough!
DeleteIt's a 2-weekly route between EBJ and TZL.
DeleteStrange choice of destenations in my opinion. I guess their strategy is offering really low prices. They should increase frequencies or atleast not schedule for example Maatricht on thuesday and Thursday, because making a weekend trip becomes difficult then.
ReplyDeleteI think Maastricht, Stockholm and Esjberg will defenitly be a succes.
Doen anybody know if they hire local crew or they are gonna use Greek crew?
Lumiwings, Animawings, Bluebird Airways....Greeks sure need to find someone to find to get them more attractive names for their airlines. The livery of Lumiwings is atrocious. And a fleet of a 737-700 and Embraer 195 is simply weird. Anyway, good luck TZL.
ReplyDeleteThose airlines are not main airlines like Aegean or Sky Express
DeleteYou don't say
DeleteReading this article felt like one of those dreams where it's all sorts of random stuff. That's quite the bizarre choice of destinations for sure.
ReplyDeleteWell, those villages are quite typical for the region. It is the place where the migrants apparently live, so no big surprise here. I mean, there are flights from SKP to Bremen and in the past to Vaxjo. The Balkan diaspora is increasing every single year.
DeleteI know but still these are not the typical Wizz villages that we're used to see
DeleteBremen is not really a village considering it has 600k people. It would be the biggest city in 4/7 ex yu republics and it had last year 1,5 million passengers.(In their prime years 2,8 million). A better example would be Friedrichshafen which has only Frankfurt and Skopje as year around destentaions and rest are only seasonal destentaions.(under 350 k passngers).
DeleteA lot of Balkan airports are connected to destanations such as Dordmund, Memmingen ,Eindhoven and Chaerloi. They are all connected by W6 and Raynair and located in areas where a lot of people live. Alomst every Belgian and Dutch person from the south has flown from Brussel Chaerloi. So these airports are all an good alternative to a bigger airport. While if we look At these destantions from Tuzla only Stockholm-Skvasta is an good alternative to a bigger airport. While Esjberg and Hamlstad are desrted airports. And Saarbrucken and Maastricht are same category as Friedrichshafen.
Lumiwings is defenitly to save costs at every corner. But from a positve sight there are atleast direct flights. There are also everywhere people who want to fly from there local airport and because there is not much chocie from these airports many people might consider to visit Bosnia.
Berlin
DeleteBremen a village.. you so funny.
DeleteFrom which megalopolis you are writing this? Dude, Bremen should be nice add to even Beg or Zag. It would cover northern Lower Saxony, Hamburg is 200km away on north-east and then North Nederland as Groningen and surroundings have no airport.
I bet it won't survive until April because of the weather.
ReplyDeleteDoes not help overseas travelers. One can't make a connection to any of those airports flying from North America. You could but it's very inconvenient. And yes, Tuzla is a good location, but we need more flights to Sarajevo and Banja Luka and we need good/better travel connections inside BiH, planes and trains.
ReplyDeleteSaarbrücken, Esbjerg? Why not with Vienna?? This destinations makes really no sense.
ReplyDelete