Air Croatia postpones launch

Air Croatia to postpones flights until 2015

Air Croatia has postponed the launch of its flights until the summer of 2015. Services from Gothenburg to Zagreb, Zadar and Split were to begin tomorrow with a wet leased ČSA Czech Airlines Airbus A319. In a statement to EX-YU Aviation News, Air Croatia, says, “Those flights have been postponed since May due to low amount of bookings and some technical problems connecting our booking system and flights to many of the major search engines, which made it too risky and difficult to sell only through our website. The routes that are shown on our website are for live testing with IATA and GDS and customers are not able to pay, just to make test bookings”.

However, Air Croatia says its booking numbers have picked up significantly over the past few weeks. “It is a little bit sad to see that we have 100+ bookings per day now when the flights have been postponed until next summer”, it says. Air Croatia also had plans to operate flights from the Swedish capital to Zagreb and Split. Furthermore, it intended to operate year long flights on a low cost basis. “Plans are to expand operations to all year round on Saturdays, once per week, from Gothenburg and Stockholm to Split and Zagreb in October”, it said in March.

In addition to the abovementioned routes, Air Croatia previously announced its plans to operate charters from Gothenburg to Dubrovnik and Pula. Furthermore, the Dutch based Denim Air was to fly smaller groups and charters from Sweden and Norway to Dubrovnik and Zadar on behalf of Air Croatia and the airline also intended to cooperate with another Croatian newcomer, Adriatic Skyways, on domestic flights within the country. Air Croatia also hoped to set up flights from Zagreb to Tel Aviv from June through to September as well as services from Southern Italy to Dubrovnik in cooperation with Italian tour operators. However, all of these plans will now have to wait another year.