Venice awaits Croatia Airlines
Croatia Airlines is already preparing for the 2011 summer season. The airline will launch flights from Dubrovnik to Italy’s canal city of Venice. Flights between the two will operate 2 times per week, every Thursday and Saturday. The Bombardier Dash8-Q400 will be deployed on the route. The service will be inaugurated on June 16 and is planned to run as a seasonal summer service only. Furthermore, Croatia Airlines will resume its seasonal flights from Zagreb to Athens, although a stop in Dubrovnik has been added. Croatia Airlines will connect the Croatian and Greek capitals 3 times per week from May 31. Unlike this summer, the Zagreb – Athens flights will operate via Dubrovnik this time around. An Airbus A319 will be used on the service. All flight details can be found in the new route launches section on the right hand side.Meanwhile, SAS Scandinavian Airlines has confirmed that it will introduce yet another flight to Croatia. During the summer season the airline will establish flights from Oslo to Pula. The Finnish Blue1 recently announced that it will serve Pula from Helsinki next summer.
Overall, a positive step for OU.
ReplyDeleteThe airline is getting its forward planning out months in advance (let's hope they do a marketing strategy to match), and it is righting markets with aircraft. I'd often wondered whether using the 320 this summer was too much on the direct ZAG-ATH route.
However, it is this 'ultra conservative' approach to planning which may prove OUs downfall (and IMHO has been its course of operation in recent years): they have already lost far too much market share from the coastal airports, and questions whether a 2-weekly service will be financially viable spring to mind.
I still believe the airline requires expansion rather than contraction to achieve profitability: an additional Q400 year round, and a 319 in the summer schedules. Leasing out some of the 32x in the winter to S.America (where there is a demand) wouldn't be a bad move either.
Reviving possible profitable coastal routes (eg to LGW), and new services to the Middle East (DXB, maybe AUH) and new European routes to MXP, BEG, WAW, SFX/BBI and MLA may provide lucrative too.
I don't think they should focus on an expansion. OU should make up their mind on whether to become a point-to-point carrier or a network carrier. Zagreb is in a good position to give Adria a run of money. They could faciliate two departure banks per day as such with one aircraft.
ReplyDeleteB = southern Balkan (1h5m max)
W = western Europe (2h max)
BBB-ZAG: 0600-0705
ZAG-WWW: 0800-1000
WWW-ZAG: 1100-1300
ZAG-BBB: 1340-1445
BBB-ZAG: 1530-1635
ZAG-WWW: 1730-1930
WWW-ZAG: 2010-2210
ZAG-BBB: 2300-0005
Knowing that the parking fees in Zagreb is notoriously high in the region, OU could overnight at an outport to save some cash.
There's two prerequisites to this hub-and-spoke operation. No more ZAG-SPU-FCO. No more random DBV-DUS.
What is random about DUS-DBV? It's summer only and carries tourists.
ReplyDeleteZAG is an underserved market. MAD, MXP, OSL, ARN spring to mind. Not being able to make DBV-LGW work is just scandelous.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteSimple. Wonder why airlines in the Balkan never work? It's not entirely due to the lack of capital. It's because of the lack of planning. You guys have this frantic passion for SUMMER. Summer this summer that. I've said for a thousand times on this blog. What are you gonna do in winter? Sell the planes? Fire your staff?
The Balkan is not the only place which witnesses a surge of tourist in summer. Why wouldn't Egyptair fly Aswan-Paris in summer? Or Dubai-Ibiza on Emirates? BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT RUNNING A BLOODY CHARTER!
When you only have 10 planes, you make full use of them. You don't do guerrilla-liked flying programme. It just confuses everybody from passengers to travel agents.
You talk about the business prospect in the Balkan day-in-and-day-out. Fine. That you gotta have a strategy to attract high yield business passengers. And business passengers need to know their carriers' schedule. For instnace, CX888 departs Hong Kong for New York at 00:30 every night. And for sure one can catch the AA4443 connecting to Boston two hours later. That's how CX become our carrier of choice.
Dear fellow armchair CEO,
ReplyDeleteEither you become a LCC. Then you fly point-to-point and fill your planes with tourists. Either you settle down to be a national legacy. Then you make sure you hub is funnel-ing passengers of all diretions at any time of the day. (No more 6 hours layover for SKP-ZAG-FCO)
I mean, seriously. In Europe, the flying distance is short. Traffic regulations are more or less unified. Taxation is avoided. 85% of the countries are in the same time zone. In our slitty Asian eyes, it's just laughable your airline executives can never make up your mind on what you want.
@Arturo
ReplyDeleteI must agree with you about the whole "summer" situation. But really, when you look at it, the winter tourist industry in the Balkans is still extremely underdeveloped. In general only Greece, Croatia, and Slovenia have developed summer tourism!!! In winter, only Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania really get anybody to come...and that is mostly by their respective capitols. I am curious as to what do you think of the plans by JAT to start direct flights Belgrade-NYC and Belgrade-Chicago?
@SerbianSausage
ReplyDeleteThanks for the analysis. I totally agree with what you said. However, we must accept a cruel fact that there's always a season that nothing works in a particular country. You ring a good bell. SOF, BEG, OTP with winter toursits. Croatia, Grece and LJU get summer tourists. This phenomenon will nicely compliment my previous proposal on "distributing" the passengers across the region.
It's like, if the Croatian economy sinks to rock bottom, OU can still sustain their operation with the ATH-ZAG-MUC flow.
BEG-NYC and BEG-ORD. What can I say? There're no less than 30 flights between Europe and New York every day. Competition is intense. The likes of BA and LH have a significant advantage over JU. BA can charge a premium for the NYC-LON passengers, then dump some cheap fares on NYC-LON-FRA. In this case, the overall profit for the particular transatlantic flight would be very satisfying.
ReplyDeleteBelgrade is too south for that matter. Also, there's not an obvious departure bank to feed onwards traffic either. Taking into account of introducing another aircraft, it doesn't seem to be doing JU a favour. (Engineering, parts, crew training, certification, etc) Unless you wet lease a 757-200WL for the route (with a Shannon stop), I don't think it's wise to start BEG-NYC/ORD at this stage.
Can we all stop with these absurd notions that YU is going to fly to the US?? It's unrealistic and an excellent smokescreen hiding the shambles of an operation the airline currently is.
ReplyDelete@ Arturo
What you are suggesting is in fact expansion rather than arguing against it: you want them to be efficient, and smarter use their current fleet though instead of purchasing extra aircraft. But this will of course result in more flights!
You make many valid points about whether the airline operates as point-to-point or through a hub: the reality is that they operate 3 hubs (ZAG, SPU and DBV) but there is a degree of randomness in their scheduling that can be avoided: a perfect example is that in Summer11 OU will add an additional weekly CPH flight... using a Q400! 2hrs30 in a prop is not my idea of a fun trip when the journey is 30+min less using a jet.
@Arturo
ReplyDeleteI agree friend. However, I think JAT should try the transatlantic flights. There is a sufficient market at its disposal (and quite frankly I hate going Newark-Munich-Belgrade and visa-versa). A direct NYC-Belgrade flight would be easier and nicer for anyone in the Balkan region and no one can really dispute that.
Belgrade may be too south but then again there are flights to Athens, which is even more south with really only Greek diaspora on those flights...maybe the same thing could happen to JAT?
And I dont\'t think it is wise to start flights yet either. But then again this is planned to happen in 2012 not next month :)
@frequentflyer
JAT has the best chance of getting transatlantic flights going. The Serbian Government passed a bill allowing JAT to get category 1 status. There is a new modern air traffic control center. Belgrade is the fastest growing airport in the region, and the most popular of ex-Yugoslavia...what more do you want? Obama to fly to Serbia first lol????