Low cost carrier Ryanair has announced the launch of nine new routes from Zagreb starting this December including Manchester, Malaga, Dublin, Paphos, Basel, Eindhoven, Thessaloniki, Malta and Naples. Almost all of the new services will be operated twice per week, while Dublin will run three times per week. Ryanair will not be competing directly on any of the new routes, with exception to the Irish capital where it will go head-to-head against Croatia Airlines. The carrier will mostly be filling in Zagreb’s network gaps and providing capacity on busy unserved routes. It will open up nonstop flights from Zagreb to two new markets which are currently unserved - Malta and Cyprus.

Out of the nine new routes, Manchester is among Zagreb’s busiest that currently lacks nonstop flights. In 2019, it was the fourth busiest unserved European destination from the Croatian capital with 8.825 indirect passengers. The citypair was previously served by Monarch Airlines, which initially planned to run seasonal summer flights but extended its operations into the winter due to strong demand. However, the low cost airline went bankrupt several months after inaugurating its Zagreb flights.

Ryanair primarily serves Cyprus through Paphos Airport rather than the country’s main gateway of Larnaca. In 2019, Larnaca was Zagreb Airport’s tenth busiest unserved route in Europe with 6.017 indirect travellers. On the other hand, Paphos saw almost no indirect traffic from Zagreb, which is unsurprising, considering most of those heading to Cyprus do so through Larnaca which is served by a number of network carriers providing connections from the Croatian capital. However, it remains questionable how strong the demand for Paphos, on Cyprus’ western coastline, will be in the winter time, especially since it primarily serves summer resort towns in the country.

In 2019, a total of 3.989 passengers flew indirectly between Zagreb and Malta. Air Malta previously operated seasonal flights to the Croatian capital. Closely behind Malta was Malaga with 3.577 indirect travellers. This city has never been served from Zagreb, which is connected to both Madrid and Barcelona in Spain.

Thessaloniki saw 3.350 travellers on connecting flights to and from Zagreb. The Croatian capital’s only destination in Greece is Athens, which is served seasonally by Croatia Airlines via Dubrovnik, while Aegean Airlines, which did not restore operations between the two following the start of the coronavirus pandemic, had previously downgraded the service from year-round to summer seasonal. Similarly, prior to Ryanair’s arrival this year, Zagreb’s only year-round destination in Italy was Rome via Dubrovnik or Split, operated by Croatia Airlines. The Croatian flag carrier served Milan on a seasonal basis, although the service was discontinued since the onset of the Covid pandemic. Ryanair has since launched operations from Zagreb to both Rome Ciampino and Bergamo, with Naples to become its third point in Italy. There were a total of 2.114 indirect passengers between Zagreb and Italy’s third largest city.

Ryanair will hope to attract diaspora traffic and those gravitating towards Basel on its new service from the Swiss city. In 2019, 1.919 passengers travelled indirectly between the two. Furthermore, with its new Eindhoven service, the low cost airline hopes to tap into the notable point-to-point demand between Amsterdam and Zagreb, served by both KLM and Croatia Airlines but lacking a low cost alternative. Furthermore, the no frills airline expects to attract Ljubljana passengers from its new Zagreb base.