Ryanair has had an exceptionally strong year in Zagreb with the low cost carrier set to handle well above one million passengers at Croatia’s busiest airport. Within the first ten months of the year, for which data is currently available, the airline welcomed close to 900.000 travellers on board its aircraft. The carrier has also notably outperformed Croatia Airlines on several routes the two compete on indirectly. The budget carrier welcomed 97.985 passengers on its London Stansted service during the January - October period, more than the 85.593 travellers handled by Croatia Airlines and British Airways combined on their respective London Heathrow flights. In addition, Ryanair saw 70.108 customers on its Charleroi route over the same timeframe, ahead of Croatia Airlines’ 40.754 passengers on its Brussels service.
Ryanair Zagreb select route performance, JAN - OCT 2023
During 2023, Ryanair introduced flights from Zagreb to Kos in Greece, and Lanzarote in Spain, the latter having launched last month. The airline performed strongly on its leisure destinations out of Zagreb during the year, which was one of the key factors in its decision to introduce several new sun destinations in 2024. Its most popular leisure route was Malta, with over 50.000 passengers, followed by Paphos in Cyprus. On the other hand, Croatia Airlines has shied away from developing leisure routes from Zagreb, primarily focusing on bringing more inbound tourists to Croatia’s coast.
Ryanair will further grow its presence in Zagreb next year with plans to station a fourth Airbus A320 aircraft in the city, introduce new destinations and increase frequencies on existing services. The carrier will launch flights to Alicante, Girona and Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Pisa in Italy, as well as Marseille in France, starting March 31, 2024. The airline is placing a strong focus on operations between Zagreb and Spain, following the success of other routes including Malaga, which will see frequencies increase next year, as well as the recently introduced Lanzarote route, initially launched as a winter seasonal service, which will now operate year-round.
ZAG welcomed 3.168.601 passengers in the first ten months of 2013. That means Ryanair had a marketshare of 28%. If I am not wrong they had over 30% the last time I checked so it seems someone else is actually doing well as well in ZAG. Maybe OU recorded better than expected results.
ReplyDeleteWith so much growth planned for 2024, I wouldn't be surprised if FR actually carries more than 1.2 million in ZAG.
The figures for Rome, Bratislava, Brindisi are missing which is cca 70k more passangers for FR
DeleteWell spotted, all those figures are missing. Bratislava was three times weekly from April until September, Rome was between 3 and 4 times weekly in the summer and 2 times weekly in the winter months, and Brindisi was 2 weekly all summer schedule
DeleteI think now we know why wizz is no longer flying to brussels from Ljubljana and why ljubljana has way less flights to london than precovid
ReplyDeleteEven JP sent CRJ900 so it was never a high volume route. Wizz Air left LJU but you have SN Brussels that flies from BRU.
DeleteIn S24 is going to be daily - 7W
DeleteIt is because of Croats who love to travel.
DeleteWell if you look at the numbers from yesterday's article about LJU, you will see Brussels Airlines has much more passengers on the Ljubljana route, than Croatia Airlines does on the Brussels one.
DeleteAnonymous 9:30, no, you're wrong. Planes are full with Slovenes, because they are filthy rich.
DeleteI still wonder if that flight to Lviv would have worked. ( announced prior the war)
ReplyDeleteI am sure it would have worked.
DeleteI am kind of shocked with the Brussels numbers, both for Ryanair send Croatia Airlines.
ReplyDeleteSame. By how high FR's numbers are and how poor OU's are.
DeleteFlights to Brussels directly are very expensive and almost entirely used by politicians and businessmen
DeleteCroatia Airlines should have the advantage on the route because its flights are filled by people who don't pay for their own tickets, and it can sell connecting flights for Brussels Airlines and United and other Star Alliance partners there. For example I once flew Zagreb-Brussels-London like this.
Deleteanon 09:59, I am living in Brussels, I am not a business man or a politician, and I use BRU 95% of the time, almost never CRL
DeleteBRU is a very expensive airport.
Delete@14:21 Why? Ryanair is so much cheaper and it operates a jet aircraft. Croatia Airlines' Dash for over 2 hours to Brussels is a nightmare.
DeleteEgg were gegrwggee
DeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteBravo ZAG, Bravo FR
DeleteBravo Ryanair!
DeleteBravo Luka Modrić!
DeleteBravo Regica!
DeleteThe way things are going, I see FR overtaking OU by passenger numbers on Zagreb in 2025.
ReplyDeleteTbh i dont think Ryanair will grow much more in zagreb. I have a feeling airport will not support his further growth. They dont wanna be like skopje - depending on one LCC. I think since aviation is getting back on track they will focus on diversifying their portfolio and to add long haul.
DeleteSkopje is managed by the same company that manages Zagreb.
DeleteRyanair is already the busiest airline in Croatia. What is more impressive is that they can beat Croatia Airlines even though Croatia Airlines has a portion of its passengers counted twice because of transfers.
DeleteCroatia Airlines barely has any transfers in Zagreb at all. Its prices are too high, the timings are poor, the connections are not well organised at all.
DeleteThey have quite a few transfers to DBV and SPU via Zagreb.
DeleteAdmin, do you have the figures for what percentage of the traffic is transfer traffic via Zagreb?
DeleteI love how Croatia Airlines never saw any interest in developing the Spanish market. Just seasonal Barcelona flights while Ryanair will have Alicante, Girona, Malaga, Lanzarote, Palma... And then someone goes "Bravo OU"....
ReplyDeleteOU made a big mistake selling 5 of it's Heathrow slots.
ReplyDeleteKrešimir Kučko needs to be publicly shamed every day for that horrible act.
DeleteOU never did anything else but mistakes. The last one : single type fleet. But those are not mistakes. Those are deliberate acts of keeping OU feeder to LHG. Ivan Misetic, who did that, hundred times worse than selling few slots, needs to be publicly shamed every day for that horrible act. But nobody dares doing so because he tops political Mafia in HR. And Kucko had to do unpopular things in order to keep OU alive and afloat after gravedigger of HR aviation left OU in disastrous shape.
DeleteRyanair manages over 1 million passengers with just 3 planes in ZAG. Crazy.
ReplyDeleteThe planes do an average of 3 rotations per day, every day of the year. Most of the summer they do 4 rotations daily.
DeleteThat's 3 times 6 A320s filled at probably around 90% every day of the year.
But don't forget that some flights are operated with aircraft from outside of Zagreb. Even now in the winter. For example, today Karlsruhe and Malta are both operated by 737 MAX aircraft from outside of Zagreb. Tomorrow it's Memmingen, Dublin, Malta and Rome. All operated from other bases.
DeleteSurprised there were so many passengers to Malta.
ReplyDeletei guess once a week to either SPU or DBV would work as well good numbers from MLA....
DeleteCroatia Airlines had 30 years to launch leisure routes. Didn't cross their mind.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteThey have limited seasonal operations from Zagreb to Barcelona. And that's it!! Shocking.
DeleteAll of you shut up! Bravo Hrvatska is what you should write. Bravo Kradeze. And Bravo Ivan Misetic.
DeleteBut how did they perform financially in ZAG?
ReplyDeleteObviously well if they are expanding next year.
DeleteI guess now we know why Croatia Airlines isn't expanding from Zagreb.
ReplyDeletethey are stil heavily exploiting the incentives model
DeleteI’d like to see them launching direct flights to PRG and BER
ReplyDeleteHow many passengers OU had on ZAG-ZRH?
ReplyDelete71.852 January - October.
DeleteWOW, twice daily flights to Zurich had less than twice as many passengers as Ryanair's two-three weekly flights to Basel.
DeleteIt goes to show how terrible Croatia Airlines' load factor is, which is already known from their average load factor when they publish it. Something like 60% on annual level. And they are about to get rid of their smallest capacity planes and take on more capacity. The logic...
DeleteNow we know why LX is not resuming ZAG.
Delete''It goes to show how terrible Croatia Airlines' load factor is''
DeleteWhat about yield factor?
Look at their financial results. It is equally as bad.
DeleteHow dare you writing bad things about OU? What would commrades from Central Comitee say?
DeletePodgorica ahead of Manchester!
ReplyDeleteCongrats Ryanair! Not bad at all
ReplyDeleteOU should focus on outbound leasure traffic from Zagreb and inbound tourists to Split
ReplyDelete@Anon 12:59 +1
DeleteJasmineeeeeee!!!! Dje si? Sa' ima? Kad ce pemzija?
ReplyDeleteIf OU were a private company, it would be a regional leader without too much effort.
ReplyDeleteTo be where they're currently at, now that takes way more effort in as much as actively sabotaging most opportunities goes beyond the mere 'cannot be bothered' attitude.
To end on a positive note: Great job ZAG and Ryan!
All the best in the New Year, folks!!
Having in mind that SOF and TGD are both newer routes and were seasonal, the results are not bad at all. They are most likely to be better with the better schedules FR is now offering this spring.
ReplyDelete