Three capital city airports in the former Yugoslavia are set to see scheduled seat capacity decline this September compared to the same month last year, continuing a trend observed over recent months. Wizz Air will remain the region’s largest carrier, offering close to one million seats across the seven markets combined.
Belgrade Airport has the most available seats on scheduled flights in September, standing at 1.068.218. The figure represents an increase of 2.7% on 2025. Air Serbia will continue to maintain its position as the largest carrier with 573.032 seats, up 6% or an additional 33.538. Wizz Air, will add 8.006 seats, growing by 4.1%. Zagreb follows as the second largest with 577.614 available seats on scheduled flights during the month. It represents a decrease of 3.6% on the previous year. Croatia Airlines will decrease its capacity by 6% but will continue to be the airport’s largest carrier with 205.173 seats. It is ahead of Ryanair with 188.768 seats, up 3%.
Skopje Airport will boast 455.094 seats in September, representing a 27.5% increase compared to the same month in 2025, with all the growth driven by Wizz Air. The low cost carrier will add 114.182 seats, marking a 66.7% increase year-on-year. However, excluding Wizz Air, the remaining scheduled airlines at Skopje Airport will collectively register an 8.6% decline in seat capacity. Pristina Airport will have 392.603 available seats, with capacity currently projected to decline 5%. It follows frequency cuts by GP Aviation, the lack of Condor and SAS services, which operated last year, as well as cuts made by Pegasus Airlines and Turkish Airlines.
Podgorica Airport will continue to grow at record pace on the back of Wizz Air’s new base, with the airport registering 329.834 seats on scheduled flights during the month, up 43.8%. Wizz Air will be the largest carrier by adding 100.282 seats, representing growth of 196.5%, for a total capacity share of 45.9%. It is followed by Ryanair with 12.4% of the market. Sarajevo will have 274.432 scheduled seats in September, representing a decrease of 1.1% on 2025. Ryanair is the largest carrier, with 44.640 seats, down 4.3% on last year. It is followed by Pegasus Airlines with 13.1% of total capacity.
Finally, Ljubljana has a total of 224.380 seats on scheduled services, up 16.7% on September 2025. Lufthansa, despite having 10% fewer flights, will have 36.7% more seats, retaining its position as the airport’s largest, holding 17.6% of capacity. It is followed by Turkish Airlines with an 11.2%, which is down 2.6% on last year. Swiss is a close third with 9.2% of all seats.
Largest carriers by scheduled seat capacity in the former Yugoslavia, September 2026
Overall scheduled seat capacity in September across all former Yugoslav markets and airports combined: 5.166.904, up 5.2% year-on-year
Please note that the above figures are correct as of the date of publication. As the month progresses, they may change due to schedule revisions or equipment adjustments. Nevertheless, they provide a reliable indication of overall capacity trends across the airports.
Amazing the growth in LJU without any carrier having a base there!
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteBEG should get 920-930k in September, hopefully in 2027 it will hit a million as well
ReplyDeleteHow come there is such modest growth at BEG? Was there considerable growth last year? I wonder if we might see a passenger drop at BEG in September since growth in capacity is so modest.
ReplyDeleteIf the capacity is growing, albeit modestly, why would there be a drop in pax numbers?
DeleteBecause Wizz Air's growth has now levelled off. They already increased capacity last September. "Wizz Air, will add 8.006 seats, growing by 4.1%. "
DeleteActually whether BEG is up or down in September will depend on charters.
DeleteUgh but charters are struggling. Are many JU seasonal flights ending in September? Their growth is also modest compares to Auguste
DeleteThe Middle East situation has surely reduced charter traffic to Egypt and Turkey.
DeleteYou can always hope, but not in Belgrade, sorry. JU have healthy, steady and persistent growth in LF, routes, airplanes, total passengers and operations, so no fake worries please.
Delete^ SMFH
DeleteRead the numbers. In Belgrade, W6 is adding 8000, JU 33500. Air Serbia is adding more than four times capacity Wizz is adding.
DeleteWhich makes sense since 40% of JU passengers are transfers. Wizz Air on the other hand has only local to rely on.
DeleteYour math is wrong
DeleteWizz keeps offering people what they want, affordable air travel to the places they want to go in modern jet aircraft.
ReplyDeleteAnd the people respond to it in record numbers.
Wizz should think about its predicted bankruptcy this winter. Their owners will NOT tolerate loss making business forever, as OU is doing
Delete+1
DeleteWizz Air is basically carrying the growth of the entire region at this point.
DeleteWizz is growing at a loss. The more seats they are adding, the loss is getting bigger, or so it seems.
DeleteYou gotta spend money to make money. Wizz shareholders know that.
DeleteWizz stock is down 25% YoY, Indigo Partners reduced ownership. Shareholders know where this kind of spending is taking the airline.
DeleteConcerned commenters have been wishing for W6 (and all the other LCCs) to go broke but they keep on growing. 😄
DeleteNext thing you are going to tell us is Brian's new role on the Board is to sit back, relax and enjoy the growth!
DeleteBravo Fraport!
ReplyDeleteWtf Croatia Airlines??? Down 6% in Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteThey really are useless.
DeleteIt's new era which commenced with introduction of Bright and Shiny which changed everything, with its big windows and USB outlets, as we used to read here 🤣
DeleteThe less ismore! Less flights means more money stays in Croatia.....very simple! Good job OU!
DeleteArrival of Air China in Zagreb doesn't seem it will help much in terms of capacity.
ReplyDeleteWhy Air China's arrival in ZAG upsets you so much?
DeleteHow am I upset? I'm just looking at the numbers and was hopeful it might push ZAG in positive territory. I'm happy Air China is coming to Zagreb and I wish them all the success in the world and hopefully the flights will go nonstop at some points.
DeleteAC arrival to ZAG is the equivalent of an E95 since they are sharing capacity with OTP which will take most of the seats on the plane, it's a larger market.
Delete10.48
DeleteAC is Air Canada. They haven't reintroduced flights to ZAG, yet.
Also, how come T'way flies to ZAG and not to BUH if the latter is larger market? And don't bother to answer, it's rethorical question. Any answer following AC for Air China would be worthless
Are you seriously implying that ZAG is a bigger market than OTP?
DeleteHey PIR, what is BUH?
DeleteBUH is the code for Bucharest when all.its airports are referred to.
DeleteIATA city code, to be more precise
DeleteMassive growth for TGD!
ReplyDeleteWhen is the Skopje growth gonna slow down... This is crazy, 30 percent over 9 months. 4M still seems out of reach, but something like 3.8M, just crazy numbers
ReplyDeleteNever, SKP is on a roll
DeleteWith a little bit of a luck and the Freebird charters from October Skopje can reach the 4mil , if not around 3.8 , but 2027 going 4+ for sure. The growth is massive since January and goes all year round
Delete@09:41 yeah right lol
DeleteNoemvri ke bide "flat" (tiny minus or plus) The festive period (3 weeks around NYE) will be busy again with the 7th aircraft returning for most of the week
DeleteAll year round SKP is growing even in winter which was not case before.
DeleteIt is incredible to how many Turkish cities there are direct flights from SKP now. Some of those cities I have not heard before, and I am sure most of the followers of this page have not either. There seem to be five or six Turkish airlines flying to many cities in Turkey. Something is going on. Ottoman Empire being restored? Not by military means but by flooding Macedonia with people and money. Turkyie is 90 million ( and rising), while Macedonia is 1.8 (and dropping).
Deletestop being pathetc. those are flights for round tours around the balkans
Deletewell also Macedonian tourists to Antalya and Bodrum, I think
DeleteHello Ex-yu, what about SPU and DBV? How are they compared to the capital city airports?
ReplyDeleteBtw. The growth in SKP and TGD is unbeliveable especially considering SKP’s already high numbers.
Split currently has a 2.5% decline in scheduled seat capacity, around 16.670 fewer seats, while Dubrovnik has 6.5% growth with an extra 34.735 seats.
DeleteWhat is driving the decline in SPU? I noticed their passenger results this year are also down.
DeleteLower touristic demand in Croatia. 99% of the passengers are tourist.
DeleteHahahahaha 99 % tourists. Why didn't you write 100 %. It's wellknown fact Croatians don't travel abroad, especially by plane, and nowhere there is no demand for anything. We also used to read here stuff like that
Deletewhat a bullshit statement @anon 10:54- read the official statistics for overnights in Croatia first before posting such nonsense.
DeleteIt's a well known fact that planes out of SPU are full of Dalmatians travelling abroad. Which is of course why the airport is a desert in winter.
Deletemaybe not 99% but 79% for sure
Delete@PIR
DeleteSo you are implying that Dalmatians are traveling less this year? That’s why there is a decline?
15.30
DeleteYou were missing lots of your classes while at school?
No, I am not. But I am not the one trying to explain that Croatian tourism is growing, while number of passengers are declining. That's physically impossible to explain.
Delete@12:23
Who do you believe? Fake news from government or real passenger numbers from Croatian airports. I don't believe government
I believe you were missing classes. And you still want to be the cleverest one. Air passengers are minority of tourists that are coming to Croatia. Majority is coming by other means of transportation and those are more compared to the last year
DeleteSure, it is well known trend that tourists are skipping aerial transport recently. But only in Crostia and your mind. How yes no
Delete'Aerial transport'?
DeleteSKP becoming 3th largest airport in Ex-yu is just amazing. The growth is huge and really amazing numbers and %. I also heard that Corendon is possible to enter the country in the months that coming which will be even bigger growth and more routes.
ReplyDeleteThank you Wizz!
DeleteSkopje is not the third
DeleteIt is, based on capacity
DeleteThe most worrying figure for Skopje is actually the 8.6% decline when Wizz is excluded. The airport is becoming extremely dependent on one airline again.
DeleteWell its a LCC destination
Deleteso are AMS, BER, BUD, BCN. PRG ... name them all ...with the hundreds of thousands monthly visitors ciming by Low cost airlines....hillarious
DeleteIndeed , but they also have legacy airlines. Skopje does not command much business traffic and that is reflected in its connectivity.
Deletei am pretty sure the majority of them have the same ratio of 60% low cost traffic. If you dont have a home carrier and want to grow more than modest, attracting LCCs is the only way. Otherwise they will have the same numbers as LJU
Deleteapropos Correndon (thanks for the hint), they are more or less confirmed from what i see but not for Skopje ...
Delete1 week ago the minister actually had meeting in their HQ in Turkey. They are in talks and hopefully something will come out in future. I beliege they talk about holiday packages as Corendon main business is those holidays offers
DeleteCorrendon already flies. Maybe as occasion but it was on the schedule several days ago.
Deletethey will launch Amsterdam - Ohrid or better said they are coming back
DeleteJuly,September and August SKP hitting 400k+ in a single month which was unreal couple years ago. The growth is just massive
ReplyDeletesept will be 360-375k
DeleteWe will see that
Deletewell they never achieve 90% of the months capacity so ther eis nothing to see
DeleteI’ve heard of a Bell Curve but what’s a Belgrade?
ReplyDeleteJokes aside, I’m always frustrated with the lackluster performance of Zagreb.
TAV built a phenomenal terminal. They also did the incentive program. Zagreb itself gets a decent number of tourists and the local population are vacationing more overseas. Yet the airport struggles against its rivals in the region. It’s not like proximity to other bigger airports is an issue as Belgrade theoretically has that with Budapest yet it usually sees consistent growth.
Air China is a promising sign, I just hope that the momentum continues as there’s a lot of potential. If COVID never happened, then we’d still see Emirates, Korean Air and even Thai AirAsia.
Its not a competition you realise?
DeleteYou’d see it the same way if your city wasn’t punching above its weight.
DeleteMy city has 5 airports. But still we shouldnt look at things as a race
Delete5 airports? Los Angeles?
DeleteNo, London.
DeleteIndeed. And i would love great connections from each to the Balkans.
DeleteLondon has 6: Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, City and Southend. So either you’re in LA or something ain’t right
DeleteLondon mate
DeleteZagreb declining 3.6% is not a great look, especially when Ryanair is actually increasing capacity. Croatia Airlines needs to start showing some growth from its new fleet.
ReplyDeleteHahahahahahahahahahahahaha
DeleteLjubljana quietly having a very good year. +16.7% is a strong result considering there is no dominant LCC driving the growth.
ReplyDeletePodgorica going from a relatively small Wizz presence to almost 46% market share in such a short period is remarkable.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see how much of that will hold
Deletewhy always with this negativity ....
DeleteIt is not negativity , he wants to say that more than the half of W6 routes in PDG are seasonal as well all other routes are seasonal. The airport doesmt have enough year round routes to keep this numbers active, thats reality
Deleteseasonal routes are seasonal routes. Its impotant for them to keep the year long routes so fingers crossed
DeleteBelgrade above one million seats in September is impressive. Not that long ago those kinds of numbers were reserved for the peak summer months.
ReplyDeleteNot even summer a few years ago could see that. Its now become solidly strong
DeleteI think in 2025 was the first month BEG had over 1 million seats in a single month.
Deleteyup, August of 2025. This year there will be two (July, August), while next year three or even four (June and September).
DeleteI am really interested in what effect will EXPO have in terms of pax growth
Sarajevo declining only 1.1% isn't particularly bad considering Ryanair is already reducing capacity ahead of its winter suspension.
ReplyDeletethats a bit i didnt expected. What did they reduce?
DeleteThey didn't reduce anything recently, probably a frequency less on some line compared to last year. Airport is likely to grow in passenger numbers with the insane LF it had so far in August, only 2 days below 90%.
DeleteThere are five fewer flights to Charleroi, four fewer to Bergamo and one flight less to Stansted and Thessaloniki during September. This is partially compensated by four additional flights to Memmingen during the month.
Deleteif they reduced in September which is stil high season no wonders they are pulling off in winter completely
DeleteNo new destinations are published for Skopje for the next winter or summer season, that is something which tells that the plateau is near and the numbers might go down soon...
ReplyDeletelol
DeleteYou will see very soon my friend what wiill be published.
DeleteAnother cancelation or summer only flights from a legacy airline? :D
DeleteEven with cancelation airport still growing and is on fire.Which tells us numbers can only go up but definitely not down. Numbers are growing with the current routes the airport have. Lufthansa left but airport growing still ;) if one legacy carrier left theu should close the airport right?? Dont you see the numbers keep growing? And for ur information very soon there will be new routes!
DeleteAnother thing is as you claim the plateau is reached yes we know that , SKP capacity is roughly 4 to 4.5 million paseengers on a year basis. And when the plateau is reached it means will maintain the current numbers which are 350 to 400+k in summer and 300to 350k during the regular monhts. So having 300k in a single month for a country of 1.8 million people is great. Nobody expect that the airport will reach 10 million passengers in a year, but maintaing 300k in a month is great numbers for the size of the airport.
DeleteYes eventually numbers will level off, but the growth has been fast refelecting increased incomes, migration and tourism.
DeleteThe war in ME stared in February, and SKP growing numbers are even with the war going on. So imagine there was no war and no fuel crise and ticket rising costs this year , SKP would have even better year
DeleteImagine, imagine
Deletebut hes got a point
DeleteIndeed, but counterfactuals are what they are
DeleteCould not Air Sebia set up their own low cost carrier? Nayone and their dog can settle airline from Belgrade, at peanuts cost, only Air Serbia can not. If v anyone, man and his dog, is making money flyying out of Belgrade, why Air Serbia can not do that? Air Serbia, mickey mous eskills, does not know how to do that. Without government protection they would go down as JAT did. Air Serbia is what it is called in Sebian "buranija od kompanije."
ReplyDeleteSorry for the typos, I was on iPhone.
DeleteCalm down. Your bias and aviation ignorance is showing, so start by checking why starting a lowcoster is a non-starter :D
Delete@20:20
DeletePlus your observatjons are very bad.
I didn't understand what are you trying to write, but I am sure it's a BS. Air Serbia is just setting new standard in EXYU region, well above best days of JAT. No one in the neighbourhood will ever be able to do even half of this so far. And JU is writing history YoY.
Delete