UPDATED MARCH 22
Croatia Airlines will commence 3 new scheduled destinations this summer, 2 from its main hub Zagreb and 1 from Pula. The national Croatian carrier will also commence its usual seasonal summer services targeted at tourists however there has been a significant cut back in the frequencies of these flights when compared to the 2008 summer season.
In order to keep up with demand Croatia Airlines will be leasing the regional Fokker F100 for the summer which will be deployed to Zurich, Podgorica, Vienna and Brussels from Croatia’s capital Zagreb. There will be small reduction in regional traffic from Zagreb as Croatia Airlines decreases frequencies to Priština from 4 to 3 weekly flights and to Podgorica from 3 to 2 weekly flights. Although flights will return to previous frequencies from mid June. However flights to Sarajevo will continue to be operated twice daily and flights to Skopje will be operated daily. Vienna will see the largest reduction in capacity as flights are cut weekly from 18 to 14 and smaller aircraft types are introduced. There will be no major increases in frequencies although new services to Barcelona begin from June 9 with 3 weekly flights and to Gothenburg from June 12 with 2 weekly flights.
The schedule below shows the frequencies during this winter and the planned frequencies. Also the table shows the aircraft used during the winter months and which aircraft will be used during the summer.
Flights from Zagreb:
| Destination | Frequency (winter 2008/09) | Frequency (summer 2009) | Aircraft type (winter 2008/09) | Aircraft type (summer 2009) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 7 | 7 | A319 and A320 | A320 |
| Barcelona (from June 9) | - | 3 | - | A319 |
| Brussels | 6 | 7 | A319 and A320 | A319 and A320 and F100 |
| Copenhagen | 3 | 4 | A319 and A320 | A319 |
| Dubrovnik | 25 | 25 | A319 and A320 | A319 and A320 |
| Frankfurt | 21 | 20 | A319 and A320 | A320 |
| Gothenburg (from June 12) | - | 2 | - | A319 |
| London | 9 | 11 (1 via Rijeka) | A319 and A320 | A319 |
| Munich | 7 | 7 | Dash8 and A319 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 |
| Paris | 7 | 7 | A319 and A320 | A319 |
| Podgorica | 3 | 2 (3 from June) | Dash8 | F100 |
| Priština | 4 | 3 (5 from June) | A319 and A320 | A319 |
| Pula | 13 | 15 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 |
| Rome | 7 (5 via Split and 2 via Dubrovnik) | 9 (5 via Split and 4 via Dubrovnik) | A319 and A320 | A320 |
| Sarajevo | 14 | 14 | Dash8 | Dash8 |
| Skopje | 7 | 7 | A319 and A320 | A319 |
| Split | 29 | 27 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 |
| Vienna | 18 | 14 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 | Dash8 and F100 and A319 |
| Zadar | 12 (5 via Pula) | 13 (all nonstop) | Dash8 and A319 and A320 | Dash8 and A319 |
| Zurich | 14 | 13 | Dash8 and A319 and A320 | F100 |
Dubrovnik will see similar seasonal services return as last year. In addition to the existing flights to Frankfurt and Zagreb, Croatia Airlines will start services from March 30 to Amsterdam and London-Gatwick, from April 3 to Split, from April 5 to Dusseldorf, Munich and Paris, from May 1 to Zurich and from June to Pula and Tel Aviv. These seasonal services will cease by the end of October although it will be interesting to see if the carrier keeps any of these seasonal destination from Dubrovnik in the winter months. In addition to the existing flights to Rome, Zagreb and Frankfurt from Split, Croatia Airlines will operate similar summer charters like those from Dubrovnik.
Osijek will see the typical seasonal domestic services to Zagreb and Split return. Croatia Airlines is introducing a new destination from Pula which should operate on a year round basis - flights to Paris start April 30, twice a week. Seasonal destinations from Pula this year will include Dubrovnik and London.
Special thanks to reader "frequentflyer".
There are some minor discrepencies between your posting and the recently-published OU Summer 09 TT:
ReplyDelete- no OSI-DBV this year (though OSI-PUY should be considered by the airline as competition to JU BEG flights)
- TGD and PRN service return to higher frequency levels (3 and 5 flights weekly respectively) from mid-June
- new codeshare flights with TAP (BLQ not served due to direct TAP flights to LIS, also new codeshares onwards from BCL)
- flights ZAG-London (LHR/LGW) should read 10 not 9 (+1 via RJK)
- only 2 flights this summer FCO-DBV not 4 (due to AP/AZ merger), day 6 operated Q400 not A320
The timetable did not mention any F100 flights - is this another wetlease whilst the airline awaits another Q400 delivery (or two)? And more importantly, if the Qs were already in place, what destinations could the airline serve extra with a wet-leased F100 (MXP, ATH, WAW etc) to expand its destinations?
Many thanks otherwise for your good work!
frequentflyer,
ReplyDeletethanks for the update, i'm really happy to hear Podgorica is getting 3 weekly zagreb flights. Since you seem to know about OU quite a bit, I have a question...it's not too related to this, but do you think OU will ever expand outside of Europe even though its only a Star Alliance regional member? What keeps OU from flying to DXB or AUH or another middle eastern hub? Is there any chance OU will become more than just a regional carrier one day? Or will the bigger flights be attracted by other airlines who will perhaps fly to ZAG in the future? thanks/hvala
jasamseljak,
ReplyDeletethanks for your question - though i'm no expert!
my memory recalls that (similar to what we have read on exYU over recent months), OU in fact had a similar 'interline' agreement with EK as JU in early-mid 2000s, though providing a 2-stop service (via FRA or VIE??) from Australiasia as OU has never flown to Dubai (as Jat did until early this year).
EK greedily (IMHO) increased their prices on the 'joint' services expenentially, and the smaller partners in the deal were simply squeezed out of the market. Read into this as you will, but there is obviously demand out there for interconnecting services, particularly from half a world away. Whether the JU deal with EY works out or not is to be seen (given that timing of these flights favours only half of flights to SYD and not MEL or BRI).
What would be interesting would be to see OU or JU operate daily flights which 'accidentally' coincide timewise with long-hauls with the MidEast carriers though are not officially interconnecting - OU has a great chance for this with their new Qs to ATH, MXP or even VCE - all flights within 2hrs (for prop planes) of Croatia (ATH from DBV). Emirates, Etihad or Qatar don't yet fly to any Eastern European city (excluding Russia), though given their success to some Western cities one could only assume that 3-weekly frequency to ZAG, BEG, WAW, PRG etc could be highly successful.
I do see OU flying outside Europe in the future: year-round services to Israel (Asia) ZAG-DBV-TLV and future seasonal flights to Cairo and/or Tripoli (Africa) could be on the cards as their network expands. Star Alliance has killed off any remote chance of OU ever flying to the USA, South America or Australia/NZ.
OUs strength must become its short-haul and becoming 'the' link between western, northern and SE europe: only achievable through strategic network additions using their short-haul aircraft, and possible infrastructure developments (such as a longer runway at Novi Sad to accomodate Qs). SJJ and BEG should be OUs next focus (in my opinion): triple-daily frequency to both destinations within 12 months is not impossible to achieve.
Sretan put i pozdrav!
ps: a small error in my original post.
direct flights ZAG-LON for summer should read 11 not 10:
ZAG-LHR daily (wed via RJK) = 6 direct flights
ZAG-LGW 4 weekly flights day1457 = 4 direct flights
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