Passenger increase for Niš Airport
Niš Constantine the Great Airport has seen improved figures in 2011 compared to 2010 by handling 25.124 passengers. The figure represents an increase 6.3% compared to 2010 with August being the airport’s busiest month. The number is still down on 35.518 passengers handled in 2006, the airport’s record since it reopened its doors in 2004. During last year, Niš Airport was only served by daily Montenegro Airlines flights from Podgorica. Unlike previous years, there were no summer charters in 2011. Furthermore, in 2010 the airport was served by the low cost Italian airline Wind Jet.Niš will hope to attract new airlines in 2012. At a meeting late last year the airport’s management announced that it was working on bringing seasonal summer flights between the city and Rijeka, to commence in 2012. Furthermore, Sky Work Airlines from Switzerland has shown interest in launching flights from Bern. The airport should see a spike in traffic this January as the city co-hosts the European Handball Championships. However, in a few months a new commercial airport in Kraljevo, only some 140 kilometres away, is set to open.
Niš Airport was opened for commercial use in 1986, with Adria Airways being the first to launch charter flights. Soon after, JAT Yugoslav Airlines commenced scheduled services to Belgrade. The airport was deserted after the breakup of Yugoslavia and bombed in 1999. It was rebuilt and reopened in 2004.
its a real shame that JAT do not fly from Nis to Zurich, Munchen, Frankfurt, Paris, London and Stockholm. For example, there are not flights from Sofia airport to Scandinavian countries, so Nis could get many Bulgarians to these flights. And wizzair should establish lines to Eindhoven, Brussels-Charleroi, Luton and Rome. Pitty.
ReplyDeleteIt is real shame that JAT don´t have fleet for all thouse flights with max 30 pax per flight. INI could compete with SOF and take passengers?? This is a really good joke!
ReplyDeleteread carefully. there is no flight from sofia to copenhagen, stockholm, gothenburg. i was writing about passengers to scandinavia.. its a shame people are negative like you are.. and second. how montenegros foker (100 sits) made 25.000 this year? inform yourself!
ReplyDeleteI carefully read your post but I still don¨t understand your logic. If all those airlines don"t have interest to start connections from SOF to Scandinavia /Sofia is much bigger than Nis/ how on earth they have interest to take flights from Nis? Montenegro flights from INI are subsidized by city of Nis. It is far from real to expect to much connection from Nis. If someone bue planes with 30+ seats Nis and Kraljevo maybe can expect flights to BEG,BUD,VIE or Timisoara nothing else.
ReplyDeletewith one of 10 jats boeings Nis can have flights to all these destinations twice per week. There are so many passengers from southern Serbia, including Nis, Krusevac, Pirot, Leskovac, Vranje who fly from Belgrade airport, because thats the only one in Serbia. Do you think that only people from Belgrade fly to Malmo, Gothenburg and Stockholm??? Two flights per week from INI to ARN would be quite enough. Taxes would be less than belgrades ones. Than, also BEG would not have 3 or 4 flights per week to ARN, but maybe 2. Why would BEG have all the flights to Europe and why all the citizens of Serbia have only BEG as a solution? There are many serbians from south and east of serbia who have cousins in Europe. All these who live in Vranje fly from SKP because its only 90 kms far from Vranje, and people from Pirot fly from SOF. Windjet was fault because of Forli. Destination was wrong. But JAT had succes with Zurich few years ago. They cannot leave one big city without any destination. Its wrong and its not fair to the people who live there. Hellooo, it would be great having flights from INI to normal destinations in Europe!!! If I live in Nis I would rather use montenegro airlines to fly to Frankfurt than to sit on the bus, go to belgrade bus station, than to take taxi and to go to the airport. But who cares about rest of serbia, except belgrade. Thats our biggest problem... Nis is big city and people from Nis travel too.
ReplyDeletesorry for off, but I have to paste here joke from CAF, I really have to, it is stronger then me :-))
ReplyDeleteArriving in a hotel in Dublin, Micheal O' Leary went to the bar and asked for a pint of Guinness. The barman nodded and said, "That will be one Euro please, Mr. O’Leary." Somewhat taken aback, O'Leary replied, "That's very cheap," and handed over his money.
"Well, we try to stay ahead of the competition", said the barman. "And we are serving free pints every Wednesday evening from 6 until 8. We have the cheapest beer in Ireland". "That is remarkable value", Michael comments.
"I see you don't seem to have a glass, so you'll probably need one of ours. That will be 3 euro please." O'Leary scowled, but paid up. He took his drink and walked towards a seat. "Ah, you want to sit down?" said the barman. "That'll be an extra 2 euro. You could have pre-booked the seat, and it would have only cost you a Euro."
"I think you may to be too big for the seat sir, can I ask you to sit in this frame please". Michael attempts to sit down but the frame is too small and when he can't squeeze in he complains "Nobody would fit in that little frame". "I'm afraid if you can't fit in the frame you'll have to pay an extra surcharge of €4.00 for your seat sir".
O'Leary swore to himself, but paid up. "I see that you have brought your laptop with you" added the barman. "And since that wasn't pre-booked either, that will be another 3 euro."
O'Leary was so annoyed that he walked back to the bar, slammed his drink on the counter, and yelled, "This is ridiculous, I want to speak to the manager".
"Ah, I see you want to use the counter," says the barman, "that will be 2 euro please." O'Leary's face was red with rage. "Do you know who I am?" "Of course I do Mr. O'Leary." "I've had enough! What sort of Hotel is this? I come in for a quiet drink and you treat me like this. I insist on speaking to a manager!"
"Here is his E-mail address, or if you wish, you can contact him between 9 and 9.10 every morning, Monday to Tuesday at this free phone number. Calls are free, until they are answered, then there is a talking charge of only 10 cent per second".
"I will never use this bar again". "OK sir, but remember, we are the only hotel in Ireland selling pints for one Euro!"
Kraljevo has a smaller population than Nis, so it will be interesting to see which airlines may start flights there. Although I believe there will be many cargo flights there. For now things are looking optimistic, but everything will be much better when unemployment goes down and purchasing power increases.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe Uzice will have more success than Nis when their airport in completed as they have a larger population than Nis.
Uzice may be able to get 1 or 2 weekly Lufthansa connecting flights as many England, German, and American people travel there along with tourists and diaspora from Austraia, who could connect in Munich / Frankfurt, or if JAT was smart about it and created connecting flights. Who knows, it would be nice for JAT to get some ATR-42 for intra- Serbia flights.
And I am not sure of this, but when you do the math to find load factor... you have 25,124 passengers, is that divided by 365 because of daily flights... or 730 because of the inbound and outbound flight? Because I believe even 1 passenger who travels for example like me FRA - BEG and 2 months later BEG - FRA is counted as 2 for the end of the year statistics, correct?
ReplyDeleteBetter for Nis airport is to open one weekly flights to 4-5 different destinations in Europe. My guess for top 5 destinations is: Oslo, Milano-Bergamo, Frankfurt-Hahn, Istanbul and Paris. It is a good variety, much better then flying every single day to Podgorica. Make deal with Wizzair and subsidise them if they already plan to subsidise. Then we would have oposite situation, people from Belgrade and other places would take a bus to Nis.Later if that goes good, invite one more low cost airline to comence flights from Nis. Thats how Nis airport could become little sweet airport. Something like Timisoara for example
ReplyDeleteINI could be more successful if it wanted to. The problem there would be the fact is that the living standard in Southern Serbia is not as good as in Belgrade. Serbia in general is not an investor friendly country (lets praise the government for that), rather a risk to investors. The ones that do come to Southern Serbia face workers who dont want to do work or just little work but have good wages.
ReplyDeleteSouthern Serbia, for example, produces alot of good quality fruits and vegetables and is a shame it hasnt used that to export it to proper markets, rather pushing them into the EU, who can be supplied by various other suppliers in Europe and abroad. The Middle East however isnt a desirable location to grow alot of produce, hence is why it is all imported. Dubai, for example, has tomatoes imported from countries like The Netherlands at prices as high as 30 dhs per kilo (~12 EUR)!!! Blueberries are from the US, as well as Strawberries, Raspberries... all which Serbia produce. Belgrade on its own is a 5 hour flight to Dubai, other ME cities are closer, yet what do Serbian producers sell in the ME? nothing. Beef as well, from Australia and New Zealand. So, Serbia doesnt have cows? Many Serbian products are Halal (eg: Plazma biscuits) so exporting to the ME shouldnt be an issue. Sending cargo to say Istanbul to go further to the ME would bring profit to these flights. Now say, JAT opened an ATR7 flight from INI to IST, it could make profit from the cargo transported even if the CLF is say 15%, hypothetically speaking. Im sure we can find pax who are willing to fly to IST from INI.
Serbian people, especially in the south are lazy and not creative, and the ones that are leave the country to seek jobs elsewhere!
@ AleksNikolicUSA
Perfect example. The basic maths you did there shows an average of around 20 pax per flight for YM of 100 seats. Sooooo profitable, its just spitting cash!
@ JATBEGMEL
ReplyDeleteit actually comes to around 34 / 100 if daily return flights happened every day of year ... still bad but a little better than last year, but Nis is subsidizing the flights!
Have in mind that not all of those passengers are on MGX. A few days in November some flights were diverted from BEG and also there are probably business flights.
ReplyDeleteWell,
ReplyDeletepeople in Southern Serbia are not more lazy than those in Subotica.
The problem is the current government
which is not able to run such a small country like Serbia with only seven million people.
Instead of begging for worthless membership in EU they should
concentrate on countries who are really succesful as already mentioned the Gulf states but also China,India and Brazil.
Instead of talking 20 years about
selling Zastava to Fiat they should sell it to the Chinese.
The Chinese would put Billions of
dollars only into Kragujevac.
And that in time of only
20 months!
Is there a chance for Delta Airlines to fly to some cities in ex yu? (e.g ZAG,BEG,LJU)
ReplyDeleteNO!
ReplyDelete@ last anonymous.
ReplyDeleteOnly when they finish Trebinje airport. Then maybe.
Bern is the smallest airport I've ever been to. seems 400sm. I love it. 30 mins before flight check-in.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of skywork connecting the little airports of Nis and Bern.
I think Nis has some potential. There's not a lot of super cheap tickets from Belgrade and I think you could get some people travelling to Nis from Belgrade for a good deal.
Ha, I wonder if Nis and Skopje end up competing with each other for giving away subsidies.
@ tamai
ReplyDeletethe Gulf states could be a great start, as it is closer to home and Serbia can do a fair bit of competitive export to these countries. From Belgrade there already is direct link to Dubai for example which helps. The labour is cheaper in Serbia, Serbia can produce cheap and quality products, which with business flowing to the region will boost jobs and standard, which again will increase the need for air travel from cities such as Nis, not just low yielding Y class pax, it could attract business travelers. What impresses me the most is that Serbia isnt properly advertised as the weekend destination for other Europeans as well as a get away destination, Serbia has many quality spas for example which i am sure could be popular. The only advertising it mainly gets is on BBC and CNN for the past 20 years with its record amount of 'breaking news' it has managed to produce for a small European nation! Well Done!
Its a shame that JAT isnt exploited for its cargo carrying capabilities as much as it should and is being used as a cash cow!
@ AleksNikolicUSA
34 of 100 isnt much better than what i said sadly to say. But if a small airport like TGD is able to attract transit pax from INI, im sure JAT could have an ATR say doing something like:
INI 0700 BEG 0730 BEG 0800 VIE 0915
VIE 1000 BEG 1115 BEG 1145 INI 1215
INI 1315 BEG 1345 BEG 1415 MXP 1545
MXP 1630 BEG 1800 BEG 1830 INI 1900
INI 2015 IST 2245 IST 2330 INI 0000
Its something from the top of my head, but im sure some marketing and advertising can make such flights viable, you have for pax ex INI connections via BEG and pax ex other destinations via BEG direct flights to INI, which would make them convenient for pax say from the US or Australia. That last IST i included could be an example of the trade i mentioned earlier to the ME. As well, having them originate in INI to go via BEG will allow more pax to board in BEG, which in turn would make the flight less costly to maintain, and will offer more flights ex BEG.
The only destinations from airports like Nis/Kraljevo/Uzice that have any chance of survival as scheduled flights would be flights operated by regional jets to large hubs like Vienna or Munich or Rome. So, this would be launched if a major like AUA, Lufthansa, or Alitalia sees then potential. But, even Jat could have a hand in this - for example, they still have their agreement with KLM whereby Jat operates the flights from Belgrade to Amsterdam, so they could use the same agreement from Nis, if only during the last xyz years anyone at Jat moved their b*tt about purchasing a plane actually suited to the airline's needs (i.e. smaller than a 737, more serious than a turboprop).
ReplyDeleteIf Jat or Croatian Airlines were smart they would offer seasonal flights to the Croatian coast. Also a connecion to Belgrade would be amazing but Jat seems to forget that there are people living South of Belgrade so maybe Croatian Airlines should start Zagreb-Nis-Zagreb just to have some decent connections.
ReplyDeleteMontenegro should also offer seasonal flights to Tivat. Maybe cut down Podgorica to 5 flights per week and Tivat with 3 just during the summer season.
And finally have flights to Zurich and a couple other Western European cities such as Munich, Frankfurt and Paris.
I also completely agree with the Scandianvian comment above. It would do well and even draw in Bulgarians to use the airport. Wasn't there going to be flights between Nis and a Scandinavian country a year or so ago but then the airline decleared bankrupcy? Btw what happened to Romanian airline and Adria hoping to start flights to Nis?
If Jat or Croatian Airlines were smart they would offer seasonal flights to the Croatian coast. Also a connecion to Belgrade would be amazing but Jat seems to forget that there are people living South of Belgrade so maybe Croatian Airlines should start Zagreb-Nis-Zagreb just to have some decent connections.
ReplyDeleteMontenegro should also offer seasonal flights to Tivat. Maybe cut down Podgorica to 5 flights per week and Tivat with 3 just during the summer season.
And finally have flights to Zurich and a couple other Western European cities such as Munich, Frankfurt and Paris.
I also completely agree with the Scandianvian comment above. It would do well and even draw in Bulgarians to use the airport. Wasn't there going to be flights between Nis and a Scandinavian country a year or so ago but then the airline decleared bankrupcy? Btw what happened to Romanian airline and Adria hoping to start flights to Nis?
what is the need for the INI-Scandinavian flights when the BEG-Scandinavian flights need more pax? connect them via BEG through ATR flights originating at INI travelling via BEG onwards to other Euro hubs such as VIE or FCO, MXP...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous January 9, 2012 4:00 AM said: "…maybe Croatian Airlines should start Zagreb-Nis-Zagreb just to have some decent connections".
ReplyDeleteDeja vu! Back in 1980s Zagreb based Trans Adria did fly on that route:).