Soon in Istanbul
Croatia Airlines will commence scheduled flights from Zagreb to Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, from March 27. Flights will operate 3 times per week every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday using the Airbus A320. Croatia Airlines rarely expands its scheduled network to the East of the country. Earlier this year it was criticised by its own employees for not focusing more on markets such as Turkey and Russia. Until now, Turkish Airlines has been the only airline operating between Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport and Zagreb’s Pleso Airport.Along with Istanbul, which will be an all year round service, Croatia Airlines is launching several new seasonal flights this summer including services from Dubrovnik to Athens and Venice, from Zadar to Munich, from Split to Hamburg and from Rijeka to London.
Croatia Airlines has had a disappointing year passenger wise. While in 2010 most airlines (including all other national EX-YU carriers) saw an increase in the number of passengers, Croatia Airlines’ numbers have dipped by almost 7%. All flight details for the Zagreb – Istanbul service can be found on the right hand side in the new route launches section.
Good news, I am happy that they are finally looking to the East!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, what are the times of TKs flights? How often do they fly?
It makes sense for OU to start these flights since it's an important Star Alliance hub.
Best of luck to them on the Zagreb-Istanbul route!
Greetings from Beograd.
Turkish has daily all year round Zagreb flights and has code shared with OU for a long time now on the Istanbul route. It will be interesting to see how this effects Turkish operation because OU worked as the 'sales agent' even though Turkish does advertise a lot in Zagreb and Croatia.
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to see ZAD-MUC. Never thought i'd see OU expand from ZAD. ZRH and VIE could work with a Dash 8.
ReplyDeleteWho are they targeting with Dubrovnik to Athens route ?
ReplyDeletechelica2
Munich is result of subventions from Zadar county. Dubrovnik-Athens and Venice work on same way, subventions from Dubrovnik county, and RJK-DBV on subvention from Rijek-Kvarner county. On of mesures from CTN recovery plan is to aks local tourist associations to give subventions to open routes from Adriatic. Management wont to influance sam priciple as Ryan, Easy etc.
ReplyDeleteTurkish try to open 14 flights per week on ZAG-IST route, but CTN management insist that CTN have to fly to IST and ask guvernment not to give licence for nother 7 flights if CTN will not be able to fly to IST.
Purger
@chelica2
ReplyDeleteDubrovnik - Athens will repalce one of the flights during the week from Zagreb, flight will be opeerate by Q400, the market will be tourists and general passengers I assume, plus possible connections, Africa, Asia, Middle East.
All three weekly flights will fly ZAG-DBV-ATH-DBV-ZAG and all of them with A319.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThat's news to me, from what I heard last year the flights from Dubrovnik were to be operated by Q400 seperatly from the Zagreb flights
^ Flights operate Zagreb-Dubrovnik-Athens. You can read about it here http://exyuaviation.blogspot.com/2010/10/croatia-airline-to-venice-in-2011.html
ReplyDeleteNow this is the sort of stuff that OU should have been doing years ago.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, if this expansion is only occurring due to a rival airline wishing to increase flights then OU will further diminish its relevance and significance in the region.
3-weekly is a start, though the airline will need more flights in time, ultimately a daily schedule.
Bring on KBP, WAW and BEG.
Very well, the main thing it is operated by an A319 ;) Could we see a codeshare with Aegean/Olympic at all since they are Star Alliance too?
ReplyDelete