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| Chongqing - Zadar flights postponed until September |
Hainan Airlines has delayed the launch of its planned charter flights between Chongqing and Zadar, which were to be inaugurated on May 1. Last week, the Chinese carrier expressed a range of concerns over the new service during talks with Zadar Airport’s Managing Director, Irena Ćosić, and the Chinese Southeast Europe Business Association (CSEBA), in Beijing. Hainan Airlines, which is China’s largest privately owned carrier and the country’s fourth largest airline, said it will need at least four months to receive all necessary permits from local and Croatian authorities to operate the service to Zadar. Furthermore, the airline is concerned whether the new route can generate enough interest. Originally, charter flights between Chongqing, in China’s south-west, and Zadar were to launch on May 1 and operate once per week, each Friday, throughout the year.
Zadar Airport’s Managing Director says the planned service has not been cancelled, with flights likely to begin in September instead. “There is no reason to panic. The dates have been somewhat shifted but that does not mean we are giving up on our cooperation with the Chinese. We will continue to lobby hard on the Chinese market”, Ms. Ćosić said. She added that services have been postponed due to China’s slow-paced bureaucratic procedures and noted that future flights would carry some 25.000 passengers. The head of the CSEBA, Mario Rendulić, who initiated talks with the Chinese, believes that Zadar is still relatively unknown and undiscovered by Chinese tourists. “We are still just a dot and we are working on changing that. We still don’t have any brands that could attract Chinese tourists”, Mr. Rendulić said.
In recent years, Croatia has seen an increase in Chinese travellers, with a little over 60.000 visiting last year. From 2009 to 2014, the number of Chinese arrivals to Croatia increased sixfold. Most visit between May and October as part of regional and European tour groups. Hainan Airlines’ arrival at Zadar Airport would be a much welcomed addition during the slow winter months when Croatia Airlines is the airport’s sole customer, maintaining only flights to Zagreb and Pula. Furthermore, the airport was hoping to compensate for the loss of several Ryanair routes this summer with this new service. Despite the delay, Ms. Ćosić believes Hainan Airlines will follow up its charter flights with the introduction of a two weekly scheduled service between Chongqing and Zadar.
If Air China does not start the route to Belgrade, Hainan would be wise to consider Belgrade-China route instead of Zadar.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened with Air China - Air Serbia codeshare announced few months ago? Air China is starting Budapest in 3 weeks and Air Serbia BEG-BUD service would perfectly connect with Air China service three times a week, but no codeshare has been announced.
DeleteOr is it that Air China (or Hainan?) wants to fly directly to Belgrade? They would probably have great connections from BEG with ASL to Adriatic destinations like Pula, Split, Dubrovnik, Tivat and Podgorica, plus other regional destinations like ZAG and SKP.
It will be announced (codeshare i mean) in a month or so. Chinese bureaucracy in notoriously slow.
DeleteI really hope this does eventually materialize. It would be great for Zadar.
ReplyDeleteIt won't Zadar airport has no infrastructure to support large wide body aircraft, Chinese can see that and are questioning the logic of these flights.
DeleteThey know of Zagreb and were looking at getting Zagreb service going, but for what ever self interest among Croatian partners Zadar was chosen, clearly Chinese are smarter than blakinite morons who came with Zadar suggestion.
Chinese can see Korean Air, JAL flying to Zagreb and it is quite likely they'll approach Zagreb airport and initiated talks over flights to Zagreb.
CSEBA, Mario Rendulić (aka cooked idiot) will be out of the play soon enough when Chinese do some checking on the character. Last year 141 000 Chinese visitors visited Croatia, majority from HK, but non the less Chinese, this year 150 000+ are expected, I can't see Zadar playing any role in future Chinese flights, Zagreb, Dubrovnik (summers only) and Ljubljana have much better chances, we'll see which one gets it but my bet is on Zagreb and it won't be this year, it'll be perhaps from March or April next year, we'll see if I was right.
JAL hasn't flown to ZAG over the past 5 years, as LJU offer better deals.
DeleteI am fairly sure that last year was the first time that no JAL flights operated. Not sure is they went to LJU last year?
DeleteJL hasn't been to ZAG since 2010. JAL always prefers LJU. 2 charter were operated LJU in / DBV out in 2014. This year all the JAL charters were cancelled.
DeleteHope so, lot of Chines for Christmas in Zadar. Best plan.
ReplyDeleteI told you this is a scam!
ReplyDeleteIt's not exactly a scam. They will start in September.
DeleteYeah sure. And in September they will say how it will start in March next year. You can take Croatia out of the Balkans but you can't take the Balkans out of Croatia.
Delete"likely" to begin in September..I doubt it. This seems to be a dodgy business deal anyway, between the unreasonable Croatian gainers and corrupted communist officials in Chongqing who have no clue in tourism business.
DeleteI hope Croatians know what they're getting yourself into with Chinese tourists.
ReplyDeleteEasy with the racism.
DeleteI totally agree. Without racisim Chinese tourists are bunch of wild people wuthout any culture.
DeleteIm currently visitibg Thailand and i was on the day trip on Coral Island and there was 500 chinese tourists. I felt like in a wrong movie, they scream in the water, spitting constantly in water and on the beach... As im croat from germany i was with few other germans and french peoole who all shared simmilar opinion about those chinese guys ad i did. So probably its the best that they do not come in Croatia and do group spitting on Kalelarga.
Stop that BS they are not worser than GB tourist.
ReplyDeleteI will never get why they chose Zadar instead of Split or Dubrovnik which would have made more sense and would definitively sell better then Zadar of all places.
ReplyDeleteSo let me get this right. The airport CEO announced first flights in March, then they moved them to May and now to September. On 28 April they had their first ever meeting with Hainan Airlines and realized that they don't even have a license to fly to Croatia.
ReplyDeleteVery professional.
No surprise there, when you have crocks making deals its hardly going to be a profitable venture. CSEBA & Mario Rendulić, who, what and where?
DeleteThis is the first thing Chinese airline has to do, establish who these crock is, even after 10 min google search they'll realize they're talking to some local balkinite mafioso, there won't be any flights to Zadar i can tell you that, no matter what Zadar airport leady says, btw she is under invastigation by Uskok, she might be facing long spell in prison soon, we;ll know soon enough they have taken bunch of records from Zadar airport and her house in Zadar, Europol is also getting in this for there's a strong suspicion that she took bribes to make Ryan Air flights possible.
Like we didn't see that coming.
ReplyDeleteLOL
nesto novo? sta mu ovo dodje.npr JU341/ASL72G JU371/ASL66H JU351/ASL38W.......
ReplyDeleteKomercijalni broj leta / Call Sign
DeletePosto je dolazilo do mesanja pozivnih izmedju kontrole i pilota ASL552, ASL512, ASL522 i ostalih slicnih uveli su ove nove zbog lakseg prepoznavanja
DeleteGospode Boze ko sve danas radi u kontroli letenja kada pobrkaju tri razlicita broja leta.
DeleteZadar airport fail
ReplyDeleteOT Sad lepo i do Peskare. Altalia će uspostaviti nove linije u domaćem saobraćaju nakon što je iznajmila avione od partnerske avikompanije Etihad Regional. Zahvaljujući povećanju flote Alitalia je uspostavila i dve nove linije u domaćem saobraćaju koristeći upravo ove avione iznajmljene od Etihad Regionala. Od 2. aprila Peruđa i Peskara su spojene sa Rimom. Peruđa se tako po prvi put našla u mreži linija nacionalnog avioprevoznika, dok Peskara već ima vezu sa milanskim aerodromom Linate.
ReplyDeleteDva nova grada u mreži linija Alitalije su dostupni i putnicima iz Srbije, sa presedanjem u Rimu.
Bilo bi dobro da ASL uzme par ATR-ova od Etihad Regional-a. Čak bi i Saab 2000 bio odličan za rute poput BUD, BNX, ZAG...
Deletelittle over 60.000 visiting last year. How many of them are from HKG?
ReplyDelete141 000 Chinese tourist visitors visited Croatia last year, mostly Zagreb and the coast, 77000 came from HG, the rest from Chinese Mainland.
Delete" Last week, the Chinese carrier expressed a range of concerns over the new service during talks with Zadar Airport’s Managing Director, Irena Ćosić"
ReplyDeleteLike how are our aircraft going to safely both land, takeoff and turn on your taxi ways!!
I am happy Zadar airport made an attempt at something different but I think they got this one completely wrong. Either the Croatian CAA will not approve this or the airline itself will see that it is not legally possible for them to establish flights.
Reading between the lines I'll suspect that the airline really is not that interested at this time otherwise they would have sought all required documents and approvals sooner.
I think these flights are as good as dead.
Ka sto smo rekli skoro je ne moguce da tu uzleti A330 zato i nema nista od letova.
DeleteINN-NS
Nece uvesti liniju zato sto ce BEG najverovatnije dobiti i onako ne moze da sleti A330 .
ReplyDeleteINN-NS
ili Zagreb :)
DeleteIli Skoplje.
DeleteNajbolja opcija bi bila da CA ili CZ leti PEK-ZAG-BEG sa A332 i sigurno bi imali LF preko 80 %.
DeleteINN-NS
No need to mix ZAG in the soup, it will be fed by Air Serbia double daily flights.
DeleteTreba povezati zato sto bi nam onda cesce dolazio npr 77W u letnjoj sezoni.
DeleteINN-NS
Ja isto mislim da bi trebalo povezati zag i beg prema istoku a i prema zapadu. Pa nisu bili glupi u bivsoj.
DeleteDa su bili pametniji u bivsoj ne bi se onako raspala. ;)
DeleteBEG ce uskoro biti povezan sa Zapadom.
DeleteINN-NS
INN-NS please give us some more inside info you collect from Innsbruck
DeleteBice bolje i sladje kad vas odjednom iznenade
DeleteINN-NS
Bas si nas lepo iznenadio u Martu sa letovima za SAD i Kinu.
DeleteOT
ReplyDeleteSomeone posted this pictures of new terminal at skyscrapercity forum, so i am just re posting these.
http://i.imgur.com/nBoEzUx.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2pF9E2p.jpg
7 Passenger boarding gangways are almost all complete with terminal's main concrete structure fully erect and complete. Terminal's dimension as is are 305m long from one to another with main terminus building being 155 wide x165m long, structure will have 65000sqm of total usable space not sure about unusable total, but amusing another 22 000sqm underground luggage sorting facility for total of 87000sqm. As part of phase 2, terminal will get additional 8 passange boarding bridges, 4 on each side for total of 16, fully extended terminal will be 700m from one end to another once phase two is completed.
As is building is quite impressive and imposing by its size, sure its tiny in comparison to some major airport terminals currently under construction or recently built, but for what it is and money spent on it, its impressive size, not to mention once complete it'll be the largest terminal in these parts/region.
Capacity once phase 2 is completed should be around 12 million pax, numbers that won't be reached before 2040, although once terminal hits 5.5 million phase 2 will kick in, invest worth another $70 million.
And to add to great news coming from Zagreb, Air Croatia is slowly expanding its network by adding Nuremberg from June on top of mostar, and FlyFubia and Qatar are both increasing their frequencies to Zagreb to daily from September, if I got that right.
Things are hotting up for Zagreb this year. What Zagreb really needs now is a LCC to base one or two aircraft at Zagreb and cover routes that aren't covered by current providers.
Dusseldorf
Lyon
Valencia (year round service is needed)
Seville (same as Valencia)
Manchester
Edinburgh
Birmingham
Oslo
Stocholm (SAS most likely in 2016)
Oslo (SAS most likely in 2016)
Helsinki (Finnair - twice weekly service or three weekly)
Krakow (twice weekly service)
Athens (Agean a must)
Geneva (three weekly service)
Kiev (twice weekly service, Ukraine International, a must)
and few other places can't think of atm.
OT:
ReplyDeleteExYU, I may have missed it. Have you posted an article on Wizzair's IPO in February. I thought it was a major story given Wizzair's presence in exYU.
LYKV-LCY