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EX-YU markets handle over a million passengers on Spain flights

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A total of 1.096.940 passengers travelled between the former Yugoslav markets and Spain in 2025, marking a record level of traffic. The figure represents an increase of 30.6% on the previous year or an additional 256.738 passengers. Throughout 2025, several new routes were launched between the region and Spain, including Croatia Airlines’ new Zagreb - Madrid service, complementing Iberia’s seasonal operation, Wizz Air’s Belgrade - Alicante flights, Ryanair’s Sarajevo - Girona route, and Vueling’s new Tivat - Barcelona service. In addition, Wizz Air restored flights between Skopje and Barcelona following a three-year hiatus. In late October, Wizz Air inaugurated operations between Belgrade and Madrid, while airBaltic introduced flights between Ljubljana and Las Palmas.

Croatia handled 592.010 passengers on services to and from Spain, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.9%. Zagreb accounted for the most travellers at 308.701, up 27.2%, driven primarily by Ryanair’s strong growth on its Spanish routes from the Croatian capital. Dubrovnik welcomed 162.055 passengers on Spain services, an increase of 11.9%, while Split saw 109.223 travellers, up 16.7%. Zadar recorded 12.337 passengers, down 29.4% year-on-year, reflecting a 30% cut in Ryanair’s flights to Barcelona.

Top five Croatia - Spain vv routes by passengers carried, 2025


Serbia recorded strong growth on services to Spain, with Belgrade handling 409.226 passengers to and from the country, up 23.2%. Barcelona remained the most popular destination, accounting for more than half of all Spain-bound traffic, followed by Madrid, Alicante, Valencia, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca. Wizz Air's new service to Alicante, launched in June, carried 38.790 passengers, achieving an average cabin load factor of 89.2%. The Serbian flag carrier will launch flights to Alicante, Seville and Tenerife this year.

Top five Serbia - Spain vv routes by passengers carried, 2025


The bulk of passengers between Slovenia and Spain were carried on flights between Ljubljana and Barcelona. Vueling’s new service, alongside charters which operated between the two cities during the year, resulted in 9.458 passengers, up 143.8% on 2024. Iberia’s seasonal service between Ljubljana and Madrid saw 4.325 travellers, up 31.5% on last year. airBaltic’s new service between Ljubljana and Las Palmas, alongside charters to the Canary Islands generated a further 1.931 customers, a year-on-year increase of 305.7%. Overall, there were 20.241 passengers between Ljubljana and Spain in 2025, an improvement of 81.4%. The remaining passengers flying between the two countries were distributed across leisure services operated by Trade Air.

Macedonia saw 33.391 passengers on its Spain flights. This was split across Wizz Air’s Barcelona service, with the carrier achieving an average cabin load factor of 86.3% on its Skopje operations. The airline also launched flights between the Macedonian capital and Madrid on October 28, resulting in a further 10.115 travellers and loads of 76.9%.

Montenegro welcomed 18.074 passengers on Spain services. Of these, 16.674 travelled on Vueling’s new Tivat - Barcelona route, which recorded an average load factor of 87.8%, while the remaining 1.631 passengers were carried on limited Iberia-operated Madrid charters. The Spanish flag carrier will launch seasonal flights between Madrid and Tivat this year.

Bosnia and Herzegovina saw 28.171 passengers on Ryanair’s new Sarajevo - Girona service, which commenced on March 31. The route recorded an average cabin load factor of 82.8%.

EX-YU flag carrier performance on Spain operations, 2025


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January 23, 2026
Belgrade croatia Dubrovnik Feature Ljubljana macedonia montenegro podgorica Results 2025 serbia Skopje slovenia Split tivat zagreb
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Comments

Anonymous said…
What's the LF on Lju-lpa flights?
09:00
Anonymous said…
So Croatia Airlines handled 8% of total traffic between Croatia and Spain... What to say.
09:01
Anonymous said…
Impressive
09:02
Anonymous said…
1.1 million passengers is crazy considering how weak Spain connectivity was a few years ago. Huge turnaround.
09:04
Anonymous said…
So far around 75% on average.
09:04
Anonymous said…
Wizz flight loads to MAD and BCN are actually not bad from SKP, especially Madrid, they launched in the winter season, and it should improve in the spring and summer I think
09:04
Anonymous said…
It is really interesting that no Spanish airline showed interest for the flights to Serbia although the demand is obviously there.
They simply ignore more than 400.000 passengers (and expected to grow).
09:05
Anonymous said…
Bravo Hrvatska!
09:07
Anonymous said…
The LF for LPA from LJU seems to be below 70 %, considering the capacity for this year was 2812 and there was 1931 passengers.
09:11
Anonymous said…
Belgrade–Barcelona more than half of Serbia’s Spain traffic
09:16
Anonymous said…
Wizz Air doing 89% loads to Belgrade-Alicante is a strong result. That one was clearly overdue.
09:20
Anonymous said…
Interestingly Air Europa has no interest in ex-Yu at all.
09:21
Anonymous said…
WizzAir could do MAD-LJU when iberia is not flying
09:22
Anonymous said…
Wow, Croatia Airlines +82%.
09:22
Anonymous said…
^ It added a new route and has a low base number. What did you expect?
09:24
Anonymous said…
Ljubljana–Spain still tiny but growing fast. Charters + Vueling seems like the right mix for Slovenia.
09:26
Anonymous said…
Skopje–Madrid loads at 76.9% aren’t amazing for LCC, but for a brand-new route launched late in the year, that’s acceptable.
09:43
Anonymous said…
Spain is becoming the region’s top leisure market. Next step is more year-round routes
09:43
Anonymous said…
Would be great for 2pw INI-BCN Wizz or INI-GRO Ryanair. If INI-MLA works year round, BCN should do at least seasonally.
09:48
Anonymous said…
Watch 2026 numbers explode again once Air Serbia adds new routes and more airports get direct links.
09:57
Anonymous said…
Croatia total is big
10:12
Anonymous said…
Do you think for Serbia will introduce more Spanish routes ? Because i can!t find more places that this destination will rentable. Perhaps Ibiza?
10:16
Anonymous said…
Ibiza. Other than that, I think Spain is now well covered.
10:19
Anonymous said…
that's okay for now, but for the future we need a LCC with year round flights to a few Spanish cities. The demand is there. Vueling is a good start, but their two, some weeks even one weekly flight to BCN in the summer is not gonna cut it.
10:19
Anonymous said…
How come Belgrade Barcelona has 213.000 but Zagreb Barcelona is not even in the Top 5?
10:25
Anonymous said…
Because it is only operated by Croatia Airlines seasonally. Ryanair flies to Girona seasonally.
10:28
Anonymous said…
Great breakdown,
10:31
Anonymous said…
Without Ryanair and Wizz, these numbers wouldn’t exist.
11:03
Anonymous said…
Great success
11:03
Anonymous said…
True
11:09
Anonymous said…
Over 30% growth in one year is huge.
11:11
Anonymous said…
That's very poor for LCC, even very questionable for LC. No bright future there
11:11
Anonymous said…
Madrid is finally taking off now while Barcelona has been dominant for years.
11:12
Anonymous said…
I think Bilbao is missing very much. Ibiza as well.
11:12
Anonymous said…
Air Serbia entering the same route will be interesting
11:12
Anonymous said…
Bilbao could definitely work. And I think it would be a surprise, like Alicante turned out to be.
11:15
Anonymous said…
Will be interesting to see how Bilbao-Split will perform this summer.
11:18
Anonymous said…
Thank you to both
11:21
Anonymous said…
The route is for Spanish tourists. It will perform fine.
11:26
Anonymous said…
Are JU's Seville flights going to be year round?
11:27
Anonymous said…
BCN is increased from April
11:28
Anonymous said…
It starts in September. It's year round
11:30
high density expert said…
means a normal 180 seater A320 is too small for the route
11:34
Anonymous said…
it works because of gastos
11:34
Anonymous said…
the site format today is crazy :)
11:38
Anonymous said…
it actually exceeds our expectations. It started with 3 weekly from the start.
11:44
EX-YU Aviation said…
The format of the comments section is temporary due to technical issues. The problem should be resolved during the day.
11:44
Anonymous said…
nah Alicante is succesfull because it gets all the Costa Brava tourists. Do you really expect the yugos to flock into to the Guggenheim in Bilbao? malo morgen
11:47
Anonymous said…
Blanca*
11:48
Anonymous said…
Slovenia still has massive untapped potential to Spain
11:54
Anonymous said…
Bilbao and around is not only Guggenheim. San Sebastián is one of the most beautiful placés in Spain near of border with France ( only 45 km from Biarritz ). Santander is also near from Bilbao and like San Sebastián also is nice place with amazing nature ,sea and mountains. So why not Bilbao?this Airport took 7 millions passengers last year without Ryanair,when 10 years only had 3 or 4 millions
12:03
Anonymous said…
dont forget inbound tourism which is increasing sharply. There is an article in El Pais today about it: https://elpais.com/extra/fitur/2026-01-23/hacia-los-balcanes-mas-inexplorados.html
12:11
Anonymous said…
in the next expansion they could station an A320 neo and run only leissure routes: Nizza, Malaga, Palermo, Warszaw Modlin, Bucharest
12:30
Anonymous said…
GRO is a large market that is growing steadily. I am confident that more routes will be added in the coming years.
12:32
Anonymous said…
there are BCN flights now to most of the airports that come in question
13:02
Anonymous said…
It is true that BCN monopolizes almost all the routes, but GRO could work for secondary airports such as INI, PDV, ZAD or others
13:08
Anonymous said…
Needs time. It just launched a few months ago in winter.
14:01
Anonymous said…
Montenegro’s entire Spain market is basically one route
14:01
Anonymous said…
The region clearly loves Spain.
14:01
Anonymous said…
Girona works fine for budget travel, but anyone connecting onwards will still want Barcelona proper.
14:02
Anonymous said…
very positive article <3
14:31
Anonymous said…
I'm surprised it took this long to discover it.
14:32
Anonymous said…
Spain offers great value for money and there is so much to see.
14:36
Anonymous said…
Exactly. Spain is the perfect combination: cheap flights + good weather + good value.
14:40
Anonymous said…
More Spanish visitors to the Balkans and more EX-YU tourists to Spain :)
14:40
Anonymous said…
They have a codeshare with Air Serbia.
14:46
Anonymous said…
I wonder if there are transfers from/to Latin America on these flights
14:47
Anonymous said…
Yes, it is really surprising that for many years the region lacked flights to Spain.
14:47
Anonymous said…
Once Air Serbia adds its new routes, Belgrade will probably hit half a million passengers with Spain alone.
14:52
Anonymous said…
Alicante numbers are impressive. That market is stronger than I expected.
14:52
Anonymous said…
only on Iberia flights and maybe JU to MAD if they codeshare with someone
15:05
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