Commercial airports in the former Yugoslavia handled over 32.5 million passengers in 2023, adding some five million additional travellers on the year before. Just over half of all airports managed to register their busiest year on record, while a number of them are still lagging behind their pre-Covid passenger levels. Notably, two airports also fared worse than last year - Rijeka and Sarajevo - although the latter is still performing above its pre-pandemic figure. During 2023, Tivat overtook Ljubljana as the slowest-recovering airport in the region, shedding over half a million passengers on 2019. Its decline is primarily attributed to the war in Ukraine, as the majority of its passengers were made up of Russian travellers, with a notable number of customers from Ukraine and Belarus as well.
In 2023, Skopje overtook the traditionally busier Dubrovnik for the first time, while Podgorica surpassed Sarajevo, which performed better than its Montenegrin counterpart last year. Ljubljana Airport took the lead over Zadar, which fared better in 2022. Banja Luka and Niš both outperformed Pula, which, until last year, was traditionally busier than the pair. Kraljevo Airport, which opened in December 2019, added some 200 additional passengers in 2023 on the previous year, boasting exactly the same number of departing commercial flights - 158.
Overall, Belgrade Airport retained its position as the busiest in the former Yugoslavia. It added the most passengers on the pre-pandemic 2019, welcoming an extra 1.8 million travellers. Pristina was second in terms of the number of passengers handled, with an additional one million customers. Skopje Airport saw an extra half a million passengers on 2019, followed by Zadar Airport with an additional 400.000 customers. Wizz Air was the largest carrier operating to and from the markets of the former Yugoslavia based on available capacity, adding an extra 1.8 million seats.
Largest airlines by scheduled seat capacity in the former Yugoslavia, 2023
Portoroz isn't included because of their weird PAX number count?
ReplyDelete66% Maribor growth, insane
DeleteProbably, yeah. Pure guesswork says they had somewhere around 30k PAX this year, so above Mostar but below Osijek
@admin maybe you can explain so we don't guess? :D
DeleteGuesswork, and not just any, pure....
DeleteRyanair growth is quite astounding
ReplyDeleteAlso, sad to see LJU falling behind Sarajevo and barely edging out over Zadar, what a shame
LJU desperately needs SkyAlps, I saw that they are adding another 8 aircraft, so they will be opening small bases like the one in Mostar left and right, now it's on the gov to convince them
DeleteKeep in mind that the current Minster of Infrastructure is the same person who, as PM, initiated the sale of Adria to that fraudulent 4K fund
DeleteAir connectivity is the last matter on her bucket list
Bratusek was actually against selling it to 4K, and was pretty vocal about it. I really don't like her, but she was almost the only one having second thoughts about 4K
DeleteSold to 4k or not, Adria wasn’t going to solve Slovenia’s air problem. When I worked in tourism back then, no one who came to visit SLO flew in with Adria. The majority flew to Venice. It was the same with arriving sportspeople. You could clearly see Italian signs in the background when they landed and spoke to reporters. Adria was a goner one way or the other. And the little most Slovenians fly, I doubt the country’s interesting to LCCs, never mind the incompetent politics with their “air connectivity” tenders. Sure, Slovenians use foreign airports, as do I, but we are dispersed. Never a full plane of us anywhere. A bit here and a bit there. Unless the traveling habits of Slovenians change, and 3/4 stop going to Croatia every time there’s a holiday, I don’t see much happening at LJU. Adria or no Adria.
Delete100% right
DeleteThat is amazing growth in Pristina.
ReplyDeleteyes but it was mostly during the pandemic. comparison with 2022 is for example much lower
Delete@Anon 11:22 This shows that recovery from pandemics for PRN was done earlier and SKP is catching up (2019 PRN vs SKP were tied). For me 2024 will be interesting as there is a level playing field (visa lib.)
DeleteMy biggest shock is Nis overtaking Pula
ReplyDeleteTrue that's interesting, especially since we often hear arguments that Serbia has only one real airport and that traffic in Nis is negligable. I guess Pula's traffic then is negliganle too.
DeleteAnd Banja Luka overtaking both Nis and Pula
DeleteIn all fairness, Pula isn't the same it used to be pre-covid
Delete@anon 10:19
DeleteNeither is INI
Pula lacks Russians and Ukrainians, same as Tivat. No much mistery around it...
DeleteNiš is also way ahead of Rijeka.
DeleteResults are pretty good actually.
ReplyDeleteÍn my opinion not really. I wasn't expecting so many airports to be below pre Covid levels.
DeleteIt is amazing that BEG has more than double pax comparing to ZAG.
ReplyDeleteTrue dat. Although JU has an extensive network where the pax count is different than in ZAG, but yes.. On the other hand Croatia has a lower population, less diaspora and still 4 airports over a million pax.
DeleteI'm not sure why people bring up the way transfer pax are counted - if you look at it that way e.g. ATL and LHR numbers are really not that impressive.
Delete^ Because he has to latch onto something to feel better.
DeleteWhat pax count is different in Belgrade?
DeleteOne of that multi-million Croatian airports, without tourists in winter months, have less passengers then Niš. Less diaspora?
Croatia has divesrsified air travel both to ZAG and the coast while Serbia has centralized.
DeleteIt was like that before breakup of Yu. The real difference now is OU and JU are headed in opposite directions and as a result, Belgrade has a strong growth while Zagreb is relying on Ryan for any growth.
DeleteI'm pretty positive if Serbia had a coast it would have airport(s) there so it's not about decentralization but tourism, to be fair.
DeleteNis performs better then several airports in Croatia so please cut the mumbo jumbo @10.51.
DeleteBelgrade is the rockstar of the group. Accolades are well deserved. There is one area where improvement is needed. In mid-2018, before Belgrade airport takeover by the new operator, BEG had only two airlines, Hainan and Air Serbia, operating direct long haul service. Almost six years later and still only those two airlines offer long haul. Airport was not able to attract any additional long haul operator.
DeleteHainan operated flights to Prague. In those 5 years there was a global pandemic with long haul flights most affected. In 2018 Belgrade had 1 long haul route. In 2023 it had 5.
DeleteYes but Croatia receives almost 20 million tourists per year, compared to that the number of tourists arriving in Serbia is negligeable, so this is really remarkable for both Belgrade and Serbia.
DeleteHainan had direct service to PEK via PRG, still counts as direct, so it is 2 destinations in 2018 vs 4 in 2023. Pandemic affected all flights and recovery is obvious. Air Serbia stated no interest in LAX and picked ORD over YYZ. Airport could have make an effort to bring airlines to connect BEG with LAX and YYZ.
DeleteYes LAX-BEG makes a lot of sense. A 12 hour flight with questionable yields and high seasonality. No airline flies from LAX to even Rome which is the gateway to one of the most visited countries in the world and you are expecting a flight to Belgrade. Some of you live in a fairyland.
Delete@Anon 11.30: What is the argument of the tourists? Are they less valuable than diaspora or transfer? So Serbia is well ahead of Greece since they have tourists? Well a lot of the Greek tourists alo fly on JU.. Awh are those Pax flying on the many IST flights?
Delete@Anon 11:51 Same was said for BEG-ORD service and yet apparently we now live in fairyland with that long, seasonal, low yield route operating during winter while Rome has no serivce, only BEG and IST has it in this part of Europe. This was posted yesterday (Milano is cargo, no passenger service):
Deletehttps://postimg.cc/dDWq46K0
Chicago has one of the biggest Serbian diasporas in the world, it is a 9 hour flight and Rome is served by American Airlines from Chicago seasonally, and year round by ITA from April.
DeleteAirport did not bring new longhaul operator. If tourist organizations or government helped financially, it would require a lot less than what lease rates for BEG-LAX capable aircraft JU needs (like A350-900) would cost. Honest effort and significant investment would likely help bring at least one seasonal operator for one of unserved destinations.
DeleteAll tourists going to northern Greece have to fly to SKG yet BEG is comfortably ahead of them the same way BEG alone will handle more passengers than all of Croatia in a few years.
DeleteAnd yet both Belgrade and Zagreb had nice growth.
DeleteAnd yet Croatia had around t 3 milion pax more than Serbia.
You are seriously comparing Zagreb's growth to Belgrade's?
DeleteVery sad about Tivat. No chance for them ro reach pre Covid numbers this year either.
ReplyDelete*to
DeleteWe should accept that the airport is at its limits. During summer, it's beyond overcongested and winter traffic is very limited. Only solutions are to redirect some planes from Tivat to Podgorica (which won't happen) or to somehow expand, although its locations doesn't really allow that
Delete09:18 was a reply to 09:42
DeleteNot such a good year for DBV. I'm not surprised they went with the Ryanair base. That said, their numbers will be huge this year.
ReplyDeleteNow imagine if JU, OU and 40 cooperated like AirFrance-KLM to take 50% of those numbers.
ReplyDeleteGreat to see so much growth at the airports. Could get another 20-30% growth on this by 2030
Imagination is great. Now, you imagine all carriers in EU, OU included, formed one carrier. I know, for you, hard to imagine.
DeleteSeeing as the nations did have a single airline only 34 years ago. Still very possible and far more important to the JUG carriers today
DeleteWe all know the reasons for that, maspok. In any case, my point has been made and you have offered no arguments to prove otherwise. Dream on, yu.
DeleteActually need a coherent point to make one. And that immature aggression shown is probably one of the "reasons" you were referring to. Thanks for showing the mindset keeping OU a feeder airline, JU limited and 40 just a gimmick
DeletePodgorica did extremely well
ReplyDeleteThank you for including the actual difference in numbers! Percentages don't give the full picture
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for the first results for 2024
ReplyDeleteSo this year there are 10 airports with over 1 million passengers. I think that's a first.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to Banja Luka. Knowing where the airport was just a few years ago, these are excellent results.
ReplyDeleterue it's quite impressive in terms of numbers. But this year they will stagnate.
DeleteThat was supposed to be *true
DeleteZadar is doing amazing. Thanks Ryanair.
ReplyDeleteDouble edged sword.
DeleteThey are dangerously putting all their eggs in a single basket.
DeleteWhat single basket? Zadar has 10+ operators
DeleteTrue. But +65% pax are Ryanair generated.
DeleteIs there a chance for SKP to ever overtake PRN?
ReplyDeletePossible, but - with the visa-free entry to Kosovo from EU - highly unlikely, at least right now. The two airports compete directly for PAX doe, so the fact that both grew is a great sign
DeleteYou are probably right. Although I think SKP will also have some benefit from the Kosovo visa free travel.
Delete@10:18 Yeah, its important that both are constantly in increase with new pax numbers. They dont steal pax from one another, there is demand from both airports.
DeleteMostar will shine in 2024.
ReplyDeleteSo Croatia is EX-Yu biggest aviation market- congrats.
ReplyDeleteIt has always been that way.
DeleteCroatia is the largest market by far that's whybits so disappointing at the state of OU.
DeleteYeah, nothing new about that. Croatia has always made up slightly over 1/3 of all of the ex yu air traffic and Serbia slightly over 1/4. Together they make up 60% of this entire number.
DeleteWhat's changed is the order of the top 5 - 6 and we're well in the post-covid period. It always used to be: BEG, ZAG, SPU, DBV, PRN, SKP. Not any longer.
Also, Ljubljana used to be ahead of both Sarajevo and Podgorica, now it's barely ahead of Zadar.
This year champions are definitely Banja Luka, Pristina and Belgrade.
Congratulations to Skopje, Podgorica, Sarajevo and Zadar too.
Honorable mention - Zagreb.
@MIchael This years champions are Belgrade, Skopje and Zagreb and from the smaller They have added the most pax compared to last year
DeleteAll three of them will continue to grow this year, SKP will have 3+ million pax for the first time ever, my opinion is 3.5m, BEG will have 9m and ZAG 4.5.
DeleteZAD overall numbers are great, but would've been even better if there was not a 70K pax drop in October in comparisson to Oct 2022. Totally beholden by RYanair.
Delete@12:52 You're right compared to 2022. I was looking at the comparison with 2019.
DeleteHope this year will be better for Ljubljana with new carriers and routes!
ReplyDeleteIt will be. Assume around 1.5 million passengers.
DeletePre-pandemic numbers in 2026 is really the best they can do, and even those numbers are with adria being gone for 4 months
DeleteWas 2018 Ljubljana's busiest year?
DeleteYes it was
Delete1,818,229 in 2018
DeleteCongratulations to Skopje! Who would have thought a few years ago. It will be very interesting how things move on in this year.
ReplyDeleteIt will be even better, the 6th plane of W6 arrived late last year, this year thanks to that there will be more increase. Also, Pegasus is launching 4 weekly flights to Antalya so we will have over 21 flights per week there. Charters to Tunisia are also expected to grow considering they grew last year and we got the first charter in 2021. But we still miss BCN.
Deleteis there any data how much revenue exYU Airports generate?
ReplyDeleteBEG has really come a long way in the past decade. Numbers are growing nicely and it's cool to see JU do so well. Good luck to BEG this year!
ReplyDeleteCroatia over 11 milion passengers. A great success for a such small country. Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteCountry may be small but the market is not. Pitty OU can't take bigger piece of cake so some extra money stays in Croatia...
DeletePRN is just behind ZAG. Is it possible for PRN to overtake ZAG this year?
ReplyDeleteYes.
DeleteI think it's gonna be race to watch in 2024: ZAG, PRN and SPU. As well as BEG-TIA in slightly wider region.
DeleteZAG will likely end up 4th this year.
DeleteThey are getting new plane, PRN new base, SPU new flights, even from Reykjavik. It will be tough race.
DeleteNot very likely, Zagreb is getting many new flights and 7 new routes this year
DeleteWhat happened with Split? Barely 2% growth.
ReplyDeleteTheir peak season was great but they could do better in longer season period. It's good number of pax though.
DeleteIts actually 15% growth. Table is incorrect, Dubrovnik shows a decline on the table too but they actually added 270K pax.
DeleteAdmin, double check the table mate.
Apologies Admin, just realised the table is a to 2019 comparison and not 2023/2022 one.
DeleteExyuaviation, how is the airline capacity calculated in the last table for flights within exYu?
ReplyDeleteI assume that if an airline flies ZAG-SJJ that means capacity of 2 (1 in ZAG and 1 in SJJ), but only one ticket sold and one leg of travel. If an airline flies ZAG-MUC that means capacity of 1 for the table (1 in ZAG).
That would mean the numbers for some airlines (OU, JU) may be higher than for others flying mostly to/from exYu, but not within exYu (LH, OU, TK).
I guess what would fix it would be a table with only departing capacity in exYu or only arriving capacity in exYu. Just to eliminate double counting of some seats being both departing and arriving seats in exYu.
DeleteIt is calculated automatically by the GDS based on the number of seats available on each scheduled flight in and out of an airport.
DeleteThank you. So in that table we have double counting of seats for the airlines flying also within exYu. Of course this is not a criticism of the exYu site, just we need to be aware of that.
DeleteIt basically means the number of seats that can actually be bought by passengers from airlines like OU and JU is probably smaller by like 25% than what the table shows (assuming 50% of their respective seat capacity is in the flights within exYu).
So it means OU is actually very close to easyJet and JU very close to Ryanair, when it comes to potential seats sold in exYu.
DeleteI don't understand where your confusion is coming from. There is no double counting of seats. It includes every scheduled flight operating to and from one airport, irrespective of the geographical location the flight is coming from, which is the way capacity, as well as passengers are counted. A passenger with a return ticket is not counted by the airport once, it is counted twice, based on each time the person boards and disembarks a flight from that airport.
DeleteAn example:
DeleteAirline A flies an aircraft seating 100 people from ZAG to SJJ. In the table it shows 200 seats capacity (100 seats departing capacity in ZAG and 100 seats arriving capacity in SJJ makes together 200 seats capacity in exYu in that table, as both ZAG and SJJ are within exYu). Still that airline may not sell more than 100 seats for that flight.
Airline B flies with the same aircraft seating 100 people from ZAG to MUC. In the table it shows 100 seats capacity for that airline (100 seats departing capacity in ZAG and 0 seats arriving capacity, because arriving capacity is in MUC, outside exYu). That arline may also sell 100 seats for that flight, just like airline A.
So both airlines may sell in exYu only 100 seats, but in the table one airline would have 200 seats capacity and another 100 seats capacity in exYu.
The table is not about airports, it doesn't have departure and arrival capacity. It's about airlines having departure and/or arrival at ex-Yu airport, so in your example both airline A and B have the same capacity in the given table.
Delete@Anoanymous 11:24
DeleteNo, you are incorrect. Airline capacity in the GDS is counted based on the number of maximum tickets each airline can sell based on the available capacity they offer on any given flight. Airlines use exactly the same data for capacity as you are provided in this and other articles.
not in my wildest fanboy dreams I could imagine 2.883.378 passengers for 2023
ReplyDeletePrishtina will be the second busiest airport in Ex-YU in 2024 given the visa liberalisation.
ReplyDeleteIt may be, but, that's only if ZAG doesn't grow at all during 2024. If ZAG grows at same pace, then PRN will need 1m new passengers (it seems to optimistic to me, although possible).
DeletePossible but not highly likely. This visa liberalization means just the standard tourist visa, allowing Kosovo citizens to stay in the EU up to 90 days.
DeleteIt'll certainly help somewhat but given the proportion of gasto passengers from Kosovo to the EU, I don't think it'll be enough to add double or more the number of passengers compared to 2023. which will probably be needed as explained by the anon above.
PRN had recovered from covid so fast mostly due to the Kosovars with work permits and permanent residency in the EU, but last year SPU actually gained more pax than PRN and finally surpassed 2019.
I think it is more likely for this visa liberalization to help Pristina stay No.3 ahead of Split, rather than overtake Zagreb.
comparison with last year (added new passengers) :
ReplyDelete1. BEG 2.337m 2. SKP 744k 3. ZAG 599k 4.SPU 450k 5.PRN 430k 6.TGD 391k and so on
thank you, that makes massive difference .
Delete2022 was still impacted by covid and other than Pristina and Sarajevo no airport had surpassed Covid numbers so to compare with 2022 makes little sense.
Delete@15:58 +1
DeleteHey everyone I'm just a spectator. A question for experts. Given Qantas project sunrise and current Sydney-London, Sydney-Rome and Sydney-Paris routes (via Perth), do yous think QF will Introduce BEG flights at one point given high ex-yu diaspora in Aus and BEG being the biggest in the region. I'm talking long term not immediately. Also TK is launching IST-MEL and IST-SYD this year.
ReplyDeleteNo. QF will focus more on bigger destinations like BCN, ATH, FRA, BRU, AMS etc. Also big diaspora is also the Greek one. So if they introduce ATH I think they're done in the Balkans.
DeleteI dont think Qantas plans to launch many routes in Europe. At the end, even if there is one direct route to Europe from Sydney or Melbourne, pax will go to that airport in Europe to catch that flight. Or, they can simply fly with TK when they launch the routes, or use Emirates, Qatar and Etihad as they already do for years.
DeleteIn the early 2000's when Qantas first looked at buying the 787, they were considering buying 80 planes. They idea was to bust hubs in Asia and fly direct to European cities. But I think the aircraft performance was not what they thought it would be at the time and that idea was shelved or canned and the order slashed to just 10 787s I think and they all initially went to Jetstar.
DeleteThere are 4 Croatian airports with the passenger numbers in millions. Very nice!
ReplyDeleteAnd sadly OU continues to completely ignore this.
DeleteYes, it's great. Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik and Zadar have millions of passengers.
DeleteOf those, only ZAD truly amazes.
DeleteOHD decreased numbers are transferred to TIA via W6 (MXP, LTN...)together with their cancelations.
ReplyDeleteSJJ will come dangerously close to 2M in 2024, maybe even surpassing the figure. We'll see how TGD and LJU fare
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Tirana almost reached Belgrade with 7,257,662 passengers. How is it possible?
ReplyDelete