NEWS FLASH
The Serbian Commission for Protection of Competition has approved the takeover of Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport by France's VINCI Airports. The regulator permitted the market concentration, as VINCI Airports Serbia, the company's local subsidiary, has not done business in the country so far. VINCI signed a 25-year concession agreement for Belgrade Airport worth 1.2 billion euros this March. On July 9,the airport's minority shareholders, which hold a 16.9% stake, will vote to approve the concession deal, while VINCI is expected to take over in late September. VINCI Airports Chairman, Nicolas Notebaert, said, "We have undergone a great diversified wave of acquisitions lately and we believe all these newly-acquired airports have great potential, whether it is Belgrade, Belfast or the Airports Worldwide portfolio. Belgrade is an important acquisition for us and will become our gateway to the Balkan region”.
Идемоооо!! Тоооо!!!
ReplyDeleteБраво за Београд! Газимо ка шест милиона путника.
To ce manje vise biti pre VINCIja :)
DeleteIn other news, LO will operate 10 weekly flights to BEG this winter. I think last year they had 7.
ReplyDeleteAustrian Airlines will increase BEG from 18 to 19 weekly flights as well.
DeletePlus easyJet with Basel and Berlin flights, 7 in total.
DY seems to be keeping one weekly flight to ARN, I thought it was seasonal?
DeleteOSL also stays three weekly in winter.
All carriers are adding frequencies except JU.
DeleteWell Wizz Air too. They are too static in BEG. Luckily easyJet is coming in to teach them a lesson.
DeleteIt would be brilliant if Easy opens the base in Belgrade.
DeleteAs far as Wizz is concerned I hope they increase London to daily and maybe introduce Vienna. That would be fantastic.
In my opinion Wizz Air's biggest mistake was that they failed to launch Berlin before easyJet.
DeleteBarcelona seems to be going really well for Vueling. Hope they extend flights into winter.
Hopefully BCN stays, that would be great. I am really not sure how they could not sustain year round route between two cities of 1.5+ million.
DeleteWizz might launch Berlin, you never know. They are very conservative in Belgrade it seems. They are not even returning those seasonal routes to Corfu and Rhodes even though there are plenty of charters!
Not to mention that LCA is still not loaded into the system for the winter season. If they cut it and if JU stays seasonal then it will be the first time since 1992 that the two cities won't be linked by air on a year-round basis.
DeleteCould one of the Cypriot airlines launch it instead?
DeleteMaybe even Blue Air or Aegean?
Would be cool but I don't see it just yet. Aegean is scaling back on its LCA operations while other airlines such as Cobalt, Cyprus Airways and TUS are busy expanding in larger markets.
DeleteWhat can we do. At least connecting flights aren't that expensive. Just today I booked my flight to LCA for next week. Came out to be €275 on JU and RO. Not bad for a last minute purchase during the high season.
@Nemjee
DeleteTo be completely precise - since 1999 as there was first embargo till 1995 and then air raids in 1999 so traffic was stopped. Is there any indication Wizz will not operate Larnaca flights?
Well, I referred to the times when BEG was fully operational. :)
DeleteJU only launched LCA in 1992. Before that the route was operated by Adria's DC-9 as part of LJU-BEG-LCA routing.
So far the only indication is that there are no flights from November. I checked and there are no other flights scheduled during the days when LCA is supposed to fly. So either Wizz Air still hasn't decided or they are planning on launching some other destination instead.
@Nemjee
DeleteAh yes, Adria flights!
Well that is not surprising. Very few people from Serbia do business with Cyprus these days. Times have changed. And summer season is holiday season so not many tourists. But you reported some good loads over winter here?
Well, there are still around 2.000 Serbs who live down there and from what I noticed more and more of them are moving there.
DeleteAs for Wizz Air, they had no problem filling their LCA flights last winter (on average there were 150 passengers). The real question is how much money they managed to make from those passengers.
We will see what happens in the end. There is still a lot of time before the winter season.
@ nemjee
DeleteLast winter there was no direct flights to Cyprus, only connecting flights through Athens
JU didn't fly last winter, Wizz Air did though some months, like November, they skipped some weeks.
DeleteAs far as JU goes, they even extended their flights to LCA by two weeks. They stopped them in mid-November in stead of late October as initially planned.
DeleteTnx Nemjee
Delete2000 is too little to sustain year round flights but I see more and more agencies are taking tourists there.
Are people really moving to Cyprus? What kind of employment do they find there?
Do we have raise in Cypriot tourists?
I think 2.000 is a nice base to sustain a certain number of flights especially for an airline like Air Serbia that's trying to get transfers. LCA and PFO handled 10 million passengers last year. JU failed there because it didn't know how to capture the market.
DeleteYes, even before I moved back to Serbia in 2013 people started to move there in quite large numbers.A lot of them find jobs in Russian banks and finance institutions. Some work in shops and so on. They mostly move to Limassol as companies there care more if you speak Russian, Arabic or Hebrew rather than Greek.
Not that many tourists from Cyprus come to Serbia. It's mostly us who go there. That said, I think most agencies work with Wizz Air.
Hopefully BCN stays, that would be great. I am really not sure how they could not sustain year round route between two cities of 1.5+ million.
ReplyDeleteWizz might launch Berlin, you never know. They are very conservative in Belgrade it seems. They are not even returning those seasonal routes to Corfu and Rhodes even though there are plenty of charters!
Good choice. Seeing the problems LH has with Fraport in FRA and the rather conservative infrastructure investment in LJU, it was good to opt for Vinci. Now lets see if they will deliver as promised
ReplyDeleteDo you think they will?
DeleteWhich problem LH has with Fraport?
DeleteIf Vinci really plans to make money on this deal by exploiting the airport (not by being compensated for a demise of national carrier like in Malev case), then they would need to make massive investments in the first decade.
DeleteYes I think they will. Belgrade sooner or later will become a (more) important strategic point again with strong growth for the next 15-20 years. The strong growth in the entire region is already evidence that economy is growing. If the EU is smart, they will find soon a solution to better involve the Western Balkans into the European economy. We dont do anyone a favor if EUR leaves them out of their strategical plans.
DeleteLH deployed several A380s to MUC since they can not grow anymore in FRA. Terminal 3 comstruction is delayed but last week, when I was in Cargo City Sued area, I saw at least some construction going on
Bez brzog razvoja dogradje i izgradnje VINCI nema sanse da povrati ulozeni novac od blizu jedne ipo milijarde evra. VINCI je pripremio rapidni razvoj u operativnom i inzenjeringu.
ReplyDeleteKada su toliko investirali, sigurno znaju sta rade. Teorije i pametovanja nisu im potrebna.
Aerodromu Nikoli Tesli investicije i razvoj jesu. Dobio je...
Zivot ide dalje u dobrom smeru.