I flew few times with a Dash, for example DBV-ZAG. I find these planes the worst of all I flew with. Outdated, loud, slow...

They have served Croatia Airlines reliably for almost two decades and were perfect for many regional routes.

@09:27 Slow? I mean you are flying DBV-ZAG, hardly demands Concorde does it? The Dash is the perfect aircraft for such a routing and does very well for airlines like SATA and Luxair.

I'm not an aviation expert, but as an average passanger I can only say that I was very happy when seeing Airbus plane operating on this route for the reasons mentioned above.

Fair enough. Although some of the Airbus were actually older and more outdated..

Q400 is loud? Slow?? You must be new to aviation world...because next time you board their wet leased ATR72, let me know if you still think Q400 is loud and slow! Lol

@Mario, from a passenger view there is no doubt about which aircraft is more comfortable. But a the end OU could have very similar model like A3 have in Greece where half of island is served with Olympic Q400 when people are transfering via ATH. If flights are full to Croatian coast with Airbus familiy than okay but operational costs are higher for sure. Same for Mostar, Sarajevo ...

09:53 agreed, i the passengers will definitely notice a difference in speed and comfort flying on an ATR compared to Dash. Only then we will know what we lost...

Both ATR and Dash are fine aircraft. Most passengers don't give a damn about that. Speed on a domestic route is inconsequential. What is noticeable is crap timetabling, crap route network, horrific pricing and a complete and utter lack of ambition.

11.42
Sign under every single word

To avarage passengers the aircraft play role especially to those who got use to fly with airbus or boing. We inex yu are maybe more used to dash and art but western European not so much….

@ 11:42 +10
@ PIR: +1 (always for you, because you are a true aviation geek and really love Croatia i .e. you are not an apparatchik ;) )

I had the honor an fly to SJJ via ZAG. ATR + Dash Q400 - both very fine aircraft. The ETF ATR72-600 was very nice. Cool seats and good LED-lighting.

Don't understand why our ex-yu people hate turboprops. If the schedule and the price are good, please use rather use turboprops than jets.

Yesterday I flew from Pula (PUY) to Zagreb (ZAG) at seat 14A on ATR72-600 and from Zagreb to Brač (BWK) at seat 10F on Dash8-400 and the former was much less noisy than the latter, in my opinion.

I would love to read trip reports of these Croatian domestic flights. I think it would be an interesting read.

There are some

@15:33 I also liked the ATR72-600 a bit more. It felt less claustrophobic. Regarding the noise level: It seems that the ATR72-600 is better isolated. Unfortunately, the ex-yu market is too small on most routes for jet aircraft, and especially nowadays can a turboprop show its potential, when the Jet fuel prices are high. Routes like SJJ-ZAG, BEG-ZAG, TGD-ZAG should be served with turboprops.

Unfortunately, OU (CTN) Management is serving the needs of wrong stakeholders. Their primary customers are the citizen of Croatia and the region of Southeastern Europe and Central Europe.

OU does not even fly to BEG. C'mon, they are just serving Lufti and Brussels...

Please don’t forget that also Germans complain about Lufti, that they asked BCG and Co. for help. Those consulting companies think that removing complimentary offerings like sandwiches will solve all problems. The Germans forum members often tell me, that a sandwich costs lufti up to 10 €. Hmmmm… Strange calculation.

ZAG-TZL and ZAG-TGD as well.

Tzl? Yeah right

Bahahahahahaha nice one

For what?

Anybody have any numbers for ZAG-ZRH?

If it was a good route LX would be on it too

Since this winter as I have noticed OU mostly uses the A220-100/300 and occasionally the A319 on the ZRH route, yes they still use Dash 8 but significantly less then they used to.

You have to train crew for those aircraft as well and they can't all be trained at the same time.

You had enough time to train them so far. Those birds were ordered 3-4 years ago. But you were sleeping all thr time

They did start training before they arrived but you cannot train all crew members because believe it or not there are slots when pilots can get to go on a simulator and those slots can not be taken up by one airline indefinitely. Because the delivery of some aircraft were late, pilots that had already been trained had to go back to the simulator to keep their licenses current because you have to have a certain amount of flying time to keep your license current. So them having to go back to the simulator took away a slot for someone that was to be trained on that simulator for the first time. It shows that you don't know much about this.

Exactly. Why wet-lease an ATR instead of purchasing or dry-leasing two or three turboprops? Croatia Airlines clearly still needs smaller aircraft for regional and domestic services.

And bigger aircraft for long-haul which as Croatia has 2 million tourists from distant markets yearly, plus ethnic traffic, plus potential transfers. But they are proud to be LHG servants and single type fleet is cementing that role

Croatia Airlines --> they new Air Baltic --> one type fleet, a hundred types of financial issues. :D

Anything's possible if you're incompetent enough.

He is not projecting anything. He is just finding excuses and probably plans to get retired in 2028

I think his projections are for 2029 or 2030. But Magic Jasmin knows, some people are inpatient.

It would be nice considering they didn't give a toss about the A320 exit. There were actually people who tried to book the last flight but they kept changing it..

Currently, the transition has cost beyond all projections and has nearly bankrupted the airline.

A single-type with too few passengers or routes to sustain anything near moderate, dear one say profitable, operations makes any 'saving' instantly lost from the bottom line.

Well I guess they mean that the current geopolitical situation impacts on their bottom line in terms of fuel and spare parts availability for planes.

Whatever padding they wish to add to the situation. The actual bottom line is crap management and lack of vision since the early 2000s when they were (during a very different era) a reasonable operation that manage with a vey different geopolitical situation in which Croatia had significantly fewer tourists and international visibility.

How much are they due to get?

35 million euros
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2025/12/state-to-inject-70-million-into-croatia.html

+1

connecting what to what is the problem OU have.

Which will NEVER be solved with single type fleet

+1 exactly. To return to the work of hub-spoke flying would require monumental efforts, and as PIR rightly points out more than one type.

Croatia Airlines needs to focus on many more things, not just single type fleet utilisation. And I don't see any of that happening soon

@09:49 15 modern aircraft does not a successful automatically make.

Is the continuous growth in the room with us? They literally reduced operations this summer.

Its a rather dull troll in the room though.

Trollers are those who always critics Jasmin and his powerful management. OU is very successful company in terms on connections, fleet age, offered seats. People in HR cant understand that they are in EU and that any EU company can have domestic flights from anywhere in EU. So, only ahead of OU is Ryan the largest company in EU. Second, the main traffic is only for short summer season. What you expect, to have 350 lines in summertime and than 40 lines in other months????So, dont troll one of the best managers in aviation in this harsh times. Jasmin is great.

@11:23 hahah good one mate.

Hahahahaha Hahahahaha hahahahahahahaha Hahahahaha, can't stop laughing...Kakav Car 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

If my information is correct, then in summer, one Dash 8 is currently used only for flights to Brac on Saturdays. That leaves only six operating days for the aforementioned route network. That's a really large number of routes, especially as some of them are served several times a day. And I don't even want to think about a possible technical problem with the one ATR...

What network?

Vrankvurt and Minken

You can't just pick and choose an aircraft for backup. It is expensive to maintain it just to fly once a month. It is expensive to keep crew current licenses. And also, I'm not sure if any of the A319s left are actually owned by OU. They certainly wouldn't extend a lease for a plane to use it once per month. And even if a plane is owned by OU, planes have cycles and flight hours after which they have to go for very expensive maintenance.