Soon in Sarajevo
Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the CEO of the Emirates Group, has announced that Flydubai will launch services to Sarajevo. Flights to the Bosnian capital will be launched once in-depth analysis of the market is completed. Speaking to the media, Al Maktoum said that he hopes flights will be launched as soon as possible. The announcement came after a banking delegation from Bosnia and Herzegovina met with the Sheikh in Dubai over the weekend to discuss closer economic cooperation betwen Bosnia and the emirate. Sarajevo currently has no scheduled flights to the Middle East. However, Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines operates regular charters from Beirut, catering mostly for Christian pilgrims visiting Medjugorje in Mostar.
Sarajevo will become Flydubai’s third destination within the former Yugoslavia after Belgrade and Skopje. The low cost airline currently operates four weekly flights to the Serbian capital and two weekly flights to Skopje. Over the busy holiday season, the airline will run up to eight additional flights to Belgrade. Flydubai considered launching services to Zagreb as well. However, the airline decided against the move out of operational purposes. While Flydabai’s Boeing 737-800s can make it to Zagreb, crew duty times would have been exceeded on the return leg. Thus, this would have required a mandatory rest period for the crew in Zagreb, which would have increased costs for the low cost airline.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was previously connected with an air link to Dubai, albeit for a very short period. Last year, Air Arabia launched seasonal flights to Tuzla. Originally, a total of 31 flights were planned for the summer season, however, due to extremely poor loads, they were cancelled less than a month after services were inaugurated. On average, the airline had less than five passengers booked on each flight, officials at Tuzla Airport said at the time of the cancellation.
Middle Eastern based airlines expanded their presence in the former Yugoslav region this year. Besides Flyduabi’s services to Belgrade and Skopje, Qatar Airways operates flights to Zagreb and Belgrade while Air Arabia recently launched services to Priština. At the recent World Route Development Forum in Abu Dhabi, Dubrovnik Airport held talks with Flydubai, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways regarding possible flights from the UAE and Qatar to the sea side city in the coming year.
Bujrum flydubaiju pa da sada mi iskoristimo Sarajevo kao tranzit luku hrvatima koji putuju u islamske zemlje. Bujrum.
ReplyDeleteThey have QR for that, I'm afraid.
DeleteBEG is served with five weekly and going six as of the Spring 2013.
ReplyDeletevery nice! whats with the mess at belgrade today!? i was checking because my friend from the USA is going to Serbia and arriving on the flight from Frankfurt, and many flights have been delayed until 15:30, and many have been cancelled!?
ReplyDeleteI ASSUME IT'S DUE TO WEATHER (HEAVY SNOW) OR MAYBE FOG
DeleteThe same thing with Podgorica airport!!
DeleteThe last plane to land was Austrian at 1415h and last plane that departed was Air France at 1533h with delay of over 2,5h. Maybe something happened in between 1415-1530h?
DeleteApparently there is fog over Belgrade, a lot of flights have been affected.
Deleteflydubai landed in Timisoara.
flydubai was completely cancelled, don't know what happened with the passengers.
DeleteThey were not fully cancelled, the flight landed in Timisoara and they were ferried to Belgrade. The ones that were supposed to fly out were just rescheduled to the next flight.
Deletefrom what I can see on the right hand side it's going to be one busy summer :-) FR again expanding from ZAD (11 destinations), PUY (5)& RJK (5. If Wizz/ FR or EZY could target BNX, INI, OHD, MBX, OSI, TZL, OMO & TIV would be briliant :-) Come on Ex YU airports :-)
ReplyDeleteToday was heavy fog over Belgrade which affected many flights. It's very interesting that NO foreign carrier used INI as alternative airport. FlyDubai landed in Timisoara, Lufthansa and Aeroflot in Budapest, SkyWork in Zagreb... Just Jat used INI!!!! I wonder if it was because of limited capacity of the airport or there's some other reason?!?!?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, wold be great to see INI busy as today with flights from Duseldorf, Amsterdam, Stocholm, Moscow, Tivat(in summer)Vienna etc. Of course, not just because of fog.
I'm pritty sure, Jat would do a great job doing flights to and from INI with the right fleet(not big capacity)and good price policy.
Hope also that BNX, MBX, OSI, TZL, OMO will get some more flights next year.
GOOOOO ExYU airports!!!!!!!!!
Wikipedia about Belgrade airport:
Delete"In 2008 the airport installed ILS CAT IIIb
equipment to allow aircraft to land and depart
in the heaviest of fog,
which in past years led to numerous flight diversions mostly in late december and early january..."
Exactely, and it should work. I'm not surprised that all ATR's flights are cancelled due to lack of modern equipement but what about modern Flydubai and Aeroflot aircrafts....they should be able to land with CAT IIIb, if it works!
DeleteIn 2006 I was trying to fly with AZ from MXP to BEG, journey that lasted 3 days because of heavy fog in Belgrade. After flights MXP-VIE, VIE-MUC, MUC-PRG the third day we landed at SKP with CSA because all the airports in the region were closed because of fog.
Many aircraft (especially those that are flying for Middle East based airlines) don’t have the technology installed to land in CAT III and CAT III can only work to some point. Today it was extremely foggy especially in New Belgrade so I think visibility was too low even for CAT III.
DeleteThey have the technology but the pilots are not rated or current in there recency to fly such approaches.
DeleteJAT has no intention or plan to fly from INI at all, not even a remote idea.
ReplyDeleteI know that and I'm pritty sad beacuse of that!!! But would be also great to make flights from BEG via INI to wherever interest exists, or base 1 or 2 planes there and do all flights from INI via BEG to wherever, Belgrade people wouldn't mind since they fly directly and INI people would be delighted flying from there and not from BEG + it's much more convenient (this is just thinking, not from economical point of view)
DeleteCheers
BH Airlines flight JA307 from Zurich (via Banja Luka) to Zurich has been diverted to Belgrade due to fog in Sarajevo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.beg.aero/passengers/flights.239.html?flightId=159200
Nice to hear that news about Sarajevo...
ReplyDeletebut it sounds till now very vague.
I think we have to wait some time to get more details.
VECE GLUPOSTI OD OVAKVE OZBILJNE AVIO GRUPE (EMIRATES) NISAM U SNU SANJAO DA CUJEM. FLY DUBAI U SARAJEVU - MALO MORGEN !
ReplyDeleteWell, they're already in SKP so...
ReplyDeleteActually the line has been cancelled...
ReplyDelete