Now you see it - now you don’t … Air Arabia pulls out of Priština
Air Arabia will suspend its Sharjah - Priština service from tomorrow, marking another failure for the low cost airline in the former Yugoslavia. Air Arabia launched two weekly flights to Priština just over a month ago. Services will be suspended due to low interest. In November, Air Arabia CEO, Adel Ali, said, “Ever since we began operations nine years ago, Air Arabia has prided itself on being an airline of firsts. We are pleased to become the first UAE carrier to offer a scheduled service to Kosovo. We are confident the launch of our first destination in the Balkan Peninsula will bring great benefits to the economic ties between the UAE and Kosovo and will support Air Arabia’s rapidly expanding network in Eastern Europe”. However, it now seems Mr. Ali might have been too optimistic in his expectations.
Air Arabia surprised many in 2011 when it launched flights from Dubai to Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The service proved to be unsustainable and was cancelled shortly after. Throughout 2011, some 9.000 passengers travelled between Priština and the United Arab Emirates, transiting through various airports.
Air Arabia was the third Middle East based airline to operate scheduled flights to the former Yugoslavia. FlyDubai continues to run services to Belgrade and Skopje, with two weekly flights to Sarajevo to be inaugurated in April. Qatar Airways also maintains flights to the Serbian and Croatian capitals.
Sarajevo is next with flydubai. 5 hour flight is big bite for small airports.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't they try their luck in Zagreb? After all, it seems that they are picking their destinations totally randomly. Or maybe even Osijek lol
ReplyDeletenis, lol
Deletekraljevo, lol
and why not mostar lol
or ljubljana lol;
but when it comes to anything that has to do something with croatia, it's lol.
Maybie you should read more carefully right side of this page, where 45 new route launches to croatian airports are announced, and 11 new launches to all other ex-yu countries. Is that LOL, too?
LOL most of them are on cheap lowcost/charter carriers, so I guess a simple lol is not enough but we need to add a prefix cheap!
DeleteThe day there are all those as scheduled flights then we can talk.
you mean like Pegasus and Wizz who operate on those other 11 ex-yu. That is definitely not lol. it's WOW -:)
Deleteand just btw, I guess you meant "cheap" prefix should be added to SAS, Croatia, Eurolot, Norwegian, Thomson. That would be LOL LOL LOL
DeleteWhy Kraljevo?
DeleteCroatian airports arnt loll there ROFLMAOOOOOOOO
Delete@Anonymous Jan 06, 4:55 pm
DeleteAll flights listed here are REGULAR(SCHEDULED). At least that many charters come to/from Croatia as well, every summer season. Which mean it's impossible to talk, "the day" today, or tomorrow, to you, as you either don't know a single thing about ex-yu aviation, or deliberately misinterprete the facts.
my, my, why am I not surprised? it was destined to fail before it started. who wants to fly to Sharjah?
ReplyDeleteOr you mean who wants to fly VIA Sharjah? The airport has cheaper taxes and the airlines offers very good prices. What seems to be the problem?
DeleteEveryone from Kosovo can use Skopje-Dubai route with FlyDubai :)
ReplyDeleteWell im not suprised eather because Turkish Airlines have captured all those who fly to emirates and asia from PRN.
ReplyDeleteI bet flydubai will launch flights to pristine soon.
ReplyDeleteWow,this is so fast!
ReplyDeleteToo big competition with TK and Pegasus...
There are rumors that hainan airlines will start flights from beijing to belgrade via kiev. Let's wait and see what will happen
ReplyDeleteWow that would be amazing! Kiev and Bejing at once!
DeleteWhere did you get that roumor? Pls
ReplyDeleteFrom a friend who works at Kiev airport. Thats what he told me, and thats all I know
ReplyDeleteIf just 10% of rumours writen here concerning BEG was true, BEG would be better than BUD today.
DeleteOT:
ReplyDeleteI love the videos you include into your website.
So nice...
I agree with some of the above comments:
ReplyDeletewhy not fly to Dubai or Abu Dhabi but to Sharjah?
Anyway, they're not going to fly anywhere anymore..
Wrong. It would fail even if the destination was DXB or AUH, with P2P carrier. There is simply no market for Kosovo-UAE P2P flights. And you should know that Sharjah and Dubai are practically one city, some Dubai beaches are closer to Sharjah then to Dubai, city buses connect the two emirates every 15 minutes between several terminals, and taxi Dubai - Sharjah airport is less then 10 euro. So,it's not about Sharjah, it's about PRN, and it would be like that for any ex-yu airport (just maybie with exception of BEG and ZAG), with P2P carrier, and service. If flyDubai jumps in to PRN now, that would be the other story, which might have sucess.
DeleteRight about Dubai and Sharjah being the same urban area.
DeleteYou forgot to add that Prishtina and Skopje are also the same catchment area.
Two airports for the same area...
Now we can thank Air Arabia to proove which one of both is not sustainable for direct flights to the UAEs.
Now its Skopjes time to show if they are better!
This is great news hopefully more will follow suit!!!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't count on it!
Delete