Belgrade sees growth in 2011 
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport saw its ninth consecutive month of growth. In January 2011, the airport handled 178.732 passengers, up by 14.2% compared to the same month last year. The sound result achieved was aided by a 7% increase in the number of flights operated to the airport. Serbia’s main hub expects to post even more convincing figures in the months come with Wizz Air opening new routes in April, Croatia Airlines and Jat Airways beginning flights to and from the Croatian coast, Eagles Airlines commencing flights from Forli and Ryan International Airlines inaugurating services to North America in the summer. In 2010, Belgrade handled 2.698.730 passengers, up by 13% on 2009.
Meanwhile, from Monday, Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport shares have been placed on the Belgrade Stock Exchange with a starting share price of approximately 6 Euros. On Monday, most Serbian citizens over the age of 18 became owners of 1 airport share.
What is this story with Eagle Airlines? When are we going to know more bout their flights??
ReplyDeleteGreat start, I am really looking forward to seeing dead months like February.
Last year Belgrade recorded a 5% increase in January so all in all seems promising.
Does anyone know how the loads are on Wizzair? Some people say that they are not doing that great.
@Ex-Yu
you forgot to add the return of airBaltic
And I am also interested in LF for Wizz Air. So if someone could provide some details. Thanks
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Wizzair's other destinations, but London Luton flight are ful. I flew twice LTN-BEG return and the plane was packed every time.
ReplyDeleteBut was the flight packed during the holiday season or out of it?
ReplyDelete@adriatic
ReplyDeleteregarding your timetables Summer 1987-1990 of JAT. Cld u please let me have your email?
thanks, Rgds
Once I flew in the season and one out of season, Wizzir is very popular in London because of luggage alowance(32 kg is a lot!!!!) and Luton is very handy for all who live in North London, plus Wizz has quite good prices
ReplyDeleteExcellent news for Belgrade. The best thing they did was reestablish links with the Croatian coast. Starting USA flights will surely bring even more pax to BEG. It is slowly becoming the regional hub we all hoped it would become. If the USA flights offer cheap tickets, then there will definitely be more flights from Romania and Bulgaria to BEG. Also good to hear that more carriers are using BEG. Hopefully we will pass the 3 million mark this year.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know when Albanian Airlines begins flights to BEG?
ReplyDeleteGreat to see all these new flights on the right side. I have only one little suggestion for ADMIn, for bigger cities with more than one airport to name which airport the flights are starting from/to eg.( Stockholm (Skavsta, Arlanda, Bromma), London (Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Heathrow, City), etc.
ReplyDeleteGreat job and thanks for all these info
Hey Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteStockholm Skavsta
Brussels Charleroi
London Luton
Toronto Pearson
and I suppose Chicago O'Hare
Adriatic has mystically disappeared :)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, is there any news about Albanian Airlines? And, Ryan Intl.? Will the flights be operated via Toronto or not?
@last anonymus, thanks for the infor, I know which airports exactly, I just thought would be nice to se them written/presented more clearly :-)
ReplyDeleteBravo Belgrade!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWizzair to/from London is pretty full, both in&out of season. I'd say 80-90% each time I flew.
ReplyDeleteGreat value!
JatNOways
Information from Wizz:
ReplyDeleteThe average load factor for all of Wizz Air's flights was 84% in 2010.
I flow with wizz for several times.
Booking 0/10 (having lot of problems every time)
Plane 8/10
Crew 3/10 (unpleasant, 2 hours talking without taking care of passengers)
In November 2009, it emerged Wizz Air is significantly loss making and has never made a profit while delaying the pay back of €32 million of debt by five years. Losses since commencing operations total €78 million, which has fueled suggestions that the airline may file for bankruptcy.
According to customer reviews, Wizz Air is a 2 star airline.
Available statistics show that just 74% flights were on time, with 26% arriving late or being cancelled. Specifically, 8% were classed as being 'late', 3% 'very late', 9% 'excessively late', and 2% cancelled completely.
Wizz Air has taken a fair amount of criticism since its inception over its quality of service and allegedly poor customer support.
Wizz Air criticism you can read here:
http://www.wizzairsucks.com/
Good news for Belgrade!
ReplyDelete'www.wizzairsucks.com'
LOL
How many airlines have a website dedicated to how bad it is!
Just on a side note I flew Emirates last year on A380 and found there service to be really poor too. They even ran out of food and did not even serve the entree when it was clearly shown on there menu that they would. I along with about 10 other passengers were given a meal put together from what was left over.
Flight attendants very rude too.
Singapore the only way to go in my opinion! When will they start flying to Ex Yu? :)
From what I know, Ryan will operate directly Toronto and Chicago O'Hare to BEG. There will be no stops @ Shannon as previously planned. It will be only if a technical stop is necessary.
ReplyDeleteAnd really, what is going on with Albanian Airlines? Will they operate to BEG? I assume so, since during the Yugoslav era, Albanians were the ones that travelled to the US the most.
@Purger
First of all, I would like to apologize for being rude to you. It was an absolutely stupid argument, and I'm sure both of us got nothing decent out of it. I hope you accept it.
And are those Wizz Air statistics in general or for Serbia alone? I've heard stories that the flights from Serbia are quite decent and actually good compared to others. I know that from Hungary they have much better service than in Poland and Romania/Bulgaria.
@Q400
ReplyDeleteI actually flew from Delhi to Larnaca the other day, B777-300 and A330-200. I couldn't agree mor with you, the crew was rude and the overall experience was far from great.
However on the Dubai Larnaca segment we had two flight attendants from Serbia, a young guy and a lady (maybe 33 years old). She came to me during the flight and we spoke quite nicely. She told me that the crew working for Emirates are very unhappy because of the way the company treats them. For examaple when she would come back from the Larnaca-Malta flight tomorrow she would be flying in the middle of the night to Tokyo only to fly to Colombo 6 hours after landing in Dubai.
So I guess that she answered all of our questions!
Plus, the A330-200 that we flew on was archaic and we were 40 minutes late because we were parked far away and had to wait for 30 bags to arrive (pilot's explanation)!!
Actually everytime I checked the site of Belgrade Airport (every day) I could see that each time their Rome flight was delayed!
Just a small update, 80 people boarded in Larnaca this morning on the JU089 coming from Dubai. I guess we will not see the reduction in prices anytime soon...
ReplyDeleteJeebusman:
ReplyDeleteNo problem man, apologize accepted.
Of course I was not talking about BEG. Budapest part of Wizz is much better than others. The worst is Bulgarian. The worst thing that happened here in ZAG was when plane did not come on time, and not for even some 27-30 hours. Problem was that no one even gave information to passengers, they did not take any care of them. Representative disappeared, airport could not find him or contact Wizz office. Some 140 passengers were furious and just sitting in airport for one and half day without any information. Main problem is that Wizz have call center in most of the countries they fly but not in Croatia. And you can not call any of those call centers because their number is local one. So if you have problem you have to get into car, go to Hungarian border (some 120 km from Zagreb), and use public phone to call Wizz.
Almost every time I had problem with booking. You finish your booking and at the very end there is massage “we are apologizing but your booking could not be done because of mistake... bla bla bla...”. And than you want to call them just to check if you made your booking or not. And you can not. Of course you call your credit card company to find if they can see transaction. Next day you find that your booking was not successful and than you try to make it again, but this time price is some 30-35% up! And all the night one was afraid what will happened with connections (of course Wizz is first leg, and others were with other companies). Very frustrating.
But I am sure you will not have this kind of problems because there would be base in BEG so they must take more care.
I still have two questions:
ReplyDelete1) When is Albanian Airlines starting flights to BEG? The whole point of those flights was transit pax through BEG to USA.
2) There are rumors that Ryan is trying to start NYC-BEG flights as well. Does anyone know if this is myth or true?
And I am curious whether Wizz will also try to start flights from BEG to the Croatian coast. If you think about it, those are gonna be very popular routes, and with Wizz Air flying them, it will put pressure on JAT and Croatia Airlines to lower their prices even more.
I do not think that Wizziar will even consider Croatia. The market from Serbia is still not that developped and with three airlines serving the market it will be a bit more difficult.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if they try to enter Serbia-Montenegro market.
Could we see in the future Wizzair show interest in Nis? Maybe some flights to be routed via there?
@ ^ Anonymous (#22)
ReplyDeleteWizz will only get a chance to open these routes in coming years *IF* they remain financially viable and in the air. Their balance sheet issues are a worst-kept secret.
There is something clearly wrong with W6 when the airline couldn't keep the ZAG route open despite LCC competition, and they have many people who won't fly them again due to poor service etc. People were willing to try them, but found reliability a concern.
I couldn't see any serious player except national carriers OU or JU (and even then, whether they are serious is to be debated) plying routes between the two countries for at least the next 3 years as air links are slowly reestablished...