Several airports in the former Yugoslavia are set to benefit from subsidies provided by state or local authorities to airlines that are willing to establish operations. There are currently three public calls taking place related to Tuzla, Sarajevo, and airports in Slovenia.
Tuzla Airport is seeking the launch of new routes, or the upkeep of existing ones maintained by Lumiwings, which are currently also being subsidised. Local authorities have listed a total of nineteen destinations that are subject to funding. They include Hahn, Berlin, Saarbrucken, Hamburg, Baden Baden, Nuremberg, Cologne, and Friedrichshafen in Germany, followed by Gothenburg, Stockholm, Halmstad, and Malmo in Sweden, then Esbjerg and Billund in Denmark, Vienna and Salzburg in Austria, Maastricht and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, as well as Istanbul in Turkey. All of them must be operated by an aircraft with the capacity to seat at least 110 passengers. The interested airline must include the total cost of operating the route in its submission, with local authorities in Tuzla willing to cover the difference if the expenses are not covered by revenue. Airlines had until earlier this week to submit their bids via email, while a hard copy of the bid must be submitted by today.
Authorises in Sarajevo have issued yet another public call for airlines to launch operations to the city with the deadline for the submission of bids set for this coming Monday. Funds will be made available to carriers that either introduce flights from a destination that has not been served in the past twelve months, start services to one of 26 unserved destinations deemed to be of strategic importance or a served destination from the list with under five weekly flights, as well as those wishing to commence operations on routes longer than six hours. The value of the subsidies has not been made public. During a similar tender last month, five airlines applied – Ryanair, TUI Airways, Aegean Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines and Norwegian.
Slovenia has issued a fourth tender call for airlines to introduce new routes to the country in return for subsidies lasting over a period of three years. The previous three public calls garnered mixed results with interest being expressed solely for flights to Ljubljana. Only airlines registered and based in the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA) are eligible for the subsidies. The ECAA is made up of states that are part of the European Union, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Iceland, Macedonia, Norway, and Montenegro. The Slovenian government is primarily targeting the introduction of flights from Vienna, Copenhagen, Madrid, Prague, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Oslo, Barcelona, and Lisbon, although all unserved destinations within the ECAA are eligible. The state has allocated 16.8 million euros in subsidies divided over three years, or 5.6 million euros per year for the latest public call. They are designed to cover 50% of the airline’s airport costs in Slovenia. If funds are left over following the completion of the ongoing public call, the state will launch a new one. Interested carriers have until this coming Monday to submit their bids.
The Tuzla subsidies are there to keep Lumiwings this summer. No one else will apply.
ReplyDeleteAre there sense to fly to BEG?
DeleteFor transfers, definitely. Tuzla is currently not connected to any major hub
Delete12:46 Tuzla will, hopefully, have direct flights to Istanbul again by Lumiwings.
DeleteThey are on sale
DeleteBut it will still require purchasing two separate tickets if you want to transfer.
DeleteSo as an addition to the Ljubljana network I would like Rome, it would make a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteWill Rome work together with TRS-FCO? AZ is very strong in TRS, would LJU work too?
DeleteCertainly many people from Slovenia use ITA flights, but FCO-LJU would hardly be a failure.
DeleteAt worst they can deploy the smaller A220s on the route 3-to-4 times a week. There's plenty of Slovenes on the Trieste flights, after all
DeleteDid Alitalia ever fly to LJU?
DeleteDid Alitalia ever fly to LJU?
DeleteI think yes
DeleteNo, no and again no. LJU-FCO will never work.
Delete3-4 weekly cannot compete with multiple daily next-door. Airline network planning isn't rocket science - it's often enough looking at human behaviour and thinking logically.
- How many passengers will adapt their travel plans to different days of the week and times of the day just because of flying from LJU rather than TRS? Only a subset. Especially since those driving to the airport won't fly out from one airport and back to another, so the compromise is often needed in both directions.
- Will the aircraft fill well in both directions each day of the week that it operates? Slovene business travellers flying out during the beginning of the week and back during the end of the week aren't good enough - you need Romans to fly the other way too.
- Will the LJU pax be as high-yielding as the pax who prefer TRS?
Vienna - Ljubljana is my bet.
ReplyDeleteMaybe will be. Next years 100% OS will come to LJU.
DeleteThe backlash when SKP started doing it some years ago... turns out everybody does it now
ReplyDeleteAnd at least we do it once every three years, not every second month…But at that time everyone was saying that we pay for our traffic, idk who’s paying and begging for something new now.
DeleteThe difference being that 98% of new routes at SKP over the past 14 years have been launched as a result of subsidies, each one lastong 3 years.
DeleteI dont see the difference in this
DeleteThe difference is that Skopje has been doing it for 14 years while these ones started in the past year. The Bosnian subsidies are just for a single season, whereas the Macedonian ones are for 3 years. The Slovenian ones are for 3 years but they cover 50% of airport costs while Macedonian ones cover airport costs plus pay a fixed amouny of money for each onboarded passenger.
DeleteMost of the routes that were subsidised are still operating today with out subsidies. Also its not 98% of the routes, only 10-12 routes of Wizz Air were launched with subsidies. In the recent years, we saw LOT with Warsaw, easyJet with Geneva, Nordwind with Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Pegasus and SunExpress with Izmir, LH with Frankfurt ( they got subsidies after but they planned the route anyway ), Norwegian from Oslo, Air Baltic from Riga, Croatia from Split. Wizz also launched Bologna, Turin and Billund on their own a few years ago even though only Bologna remained in operation. Keep in mind that all 30 routes of W6 from SKP were not launched with subsidies, only half of them are. So i dont know which 98% of routes you are talking about. At least we are not begging airlines every month for new routes with some stupid unreasonable tenders like SJJ did when some unknown carriers applied.
DeleteAnd of course LJU is doing this now not 14 years ago cause then the government was injecting milions into the poor Adria.
Delete@9.06 you are so right. funniest thing is the "paid routes" saying vanished from the comments haha
Delete@13.22 you got it wrong! the "fixed amouny of money for each onboarded passenger" is exactly half of the airport cost at that time and only that is part of the subs. I like the slovenian formulacija much better it sounds more elegant
The difference is that between 8-14 years ago, air travel was much weaker, so subsidies were much more needed. Over 90% of the Wizzair routes in SKP are not subsidized anymore. So what happened 14 years ago is not relevant anymore. Only new routes, which are currently Frankfurt, Salzburg, and Ljubljana, are subsidized. Let's say FRA has 80k passengers, and Ljubljana and Salzburg together have 70k. It's €7 per departing passenger, so for half a million euros, you have three new routes per year. The airport costs are not covered at all. After three years, they can decide to continue or not. If there is demand, they will stay. If not, they will leave; the €7 per passenger is not going to make them stay.
DeleteSlovenia allocates 5.6 million euros per year for Madrid, Helsinki, and Oslo. It's not really clear how much every airline will get and if they will use all the 5.6 million euros.
I don't know how much Lumiwngs get at Tuzla, but they exploit Tuzla for every penny. They are even cheaper than Ryanair. Come on, Halmstad, Esbjerg, etc. Even with subsidies, no one serious is interested, unfortunately. So the market really needs to perform well. Sometimes airlines doubt if it's a good idea to start a new market or route. That is a great moment to give subsidies. To give an airline a push to start new flights, not to give them money for the next 10 years.
The new routes with Ryanair from SJJ are great, though. It won't cover the Wizz loss, but it's a great start.
So overall, SKP definitely has the best deal. Overall, per passenger, the cheapest subsidies. And Wizz employs pilots and stewards (who get more paid than the national average). Most importantly, SKP achieved a healthy market with the help of subsidies in the past, with Wizzair having a base in SKP for 12 years. With every year carrying more passengers. When it started in 2012, most routes were subsidized, and now almost nothing. I hope that Bosnia and Slovenia will achieve the same.
Yes Skopje is really the envy of European aviation...
Delete@15.14 it definitely isnt but obviously somebody is envy at them ;)
DeleteYeah sure
DeleteGuys what happened to p2p in LJU? Is there any hope of recovery in 2024?
ReplyDeleteWell at least LJU has more passengers than KBP.
DeleteBravo Fraport!
DeleteYes, there bi first long haul flights to India
Delete9:10 yeah KBP probably is the right competitor in passenger nubers for Lju
DeleteI bet there will be yet another fantastic outcome of subsidy tender for flights to Slovenia just like the previous three!
ReplyDeleteOS to VIE, AZ to FCO, VY to BCN, DY to ARN.
DeleteTrade Air flights to Barcelona were many last summer. So I think BCN will do well, we all see FR doing well in TRS.
DeleteAnon 9:11 yeah its good to be optimistic but we have said that for every tender there was and we all know what were the outcomes
DeleteMy feeling is this time around no airline will apply
DeleteAt best we'll see 2 or 3 airlines apply, but start flights only after the summer season, since 99% of airlines have finalised their summer schedules
DeleteI really hope there are 2-3 airlines.
DeleteIt would make sense for Vueling to launch flights from Barcelona now that they discontinued Zagreb and maybe KLM to Amsterdam since they won't be flying to Graz anymore. Anyways hoping for a good outcome of this tender
ReplyDeleteHopefully it's more than 2 just weekly that we've gotten with tenders so far. 3 or 4 would be great, even if on lower capacity jets
DeletePeople were screaming from the top of the lungs when state aid was issued to Adria, but keep stumm when state is doing same for privately owned airport….
DeleteYeah now they are even choosing, naah i dont want twice per week i want four times per week cause my brain will be satisfied with that. When skopje airport was and still is doing this for years, everybody were screaming that we need to pay if we want something new. Now seemes that many airports are doing the same, not onve every three years but once a month.
DeleteWould be nice to see an airline apply for Maribor flights like maybe Ryanair, AirSerbia or someone
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI hope Sarajevo will get some flights to Copenhagen, Hamburg and possibly another Danish airport as well. Denmark, Southern Sweden and Northern Germany are rich on Bosnian and Herzegovinian diaspora, but the current connections by air between Bosnia and Herzegovina and these places can only be described as an absolute catastrophe. There is no direct route between Sarajevo and anywhere in continental Europe between Cologne/Bonn and Gothenburg.
ReplyDeleteIma se moze se
ReplyDeletepayed routes
DeleteI really hope that photo becomes reality and we see KLM start flights to LJU.
ReplyDeleteMaribor could be getting Frankfurt flights, maybe even Belgrade.
ReplyDeleteFor a few days Maribor was listed under Austrian destinations, which means it was in the system somewhere in the Lufthansa group
I'm just wondering what is the Slovenian government's long term aviation strategy? Have endless tenders?
ReplyDeleteThey don’t have a long term strategy my friend.
DeleteStrategy and Slo governments? It's like oil and water, never float together
DeleteANy airlines which takes up the Tuzla service should use Zdravko Colics song to market it, would instantly get passengers to fly with them
ReplyDeleteActually any of the cities would work as the song mentions most ex yu cities
DeleteC'mmon Air Serbia come to Maribor. Such a beautiful airport, flat, highway all the way to the nice parking..it should be first Slo airport, much nicer than Lj
ReplyDelete