Macedonia's two international airports handled 1.041.383 passengers during the first half of 2018, representing a notable 21% increase year-on-year. Low cost carrier Wizz Air extended its dominance on the market and now accounts for 63.3% of all passengers travelling to and from the country. It welcomed 659.195 passengers on its Macedonia services during the six-month period. It was followed by Turkish Airlines in a distant second place with a 8.1% passenger share, then Austrian Airlines with 5.1% of the market, Germania Flug with 4.6%, Edelweiss Air with a 3.8% share, Croatia Airlines with 32.282 travellers or a 3.1% share, and Pegasus Airlines with a 3% traveller share. Jointly, Macedonia's two airports exceeded the average European passenger growth rate which stood at 6.1%.
Busiest airlines in Macedonia - H1 2018
| Destination | PAX |
|---|---|
| Wizz Air | 659.195 |
| Turkish Airlines | 83.310 |
| Austrian Airlines | 53.110 |
| Germania Flug | 47.903 |
| Edelweiss Air | 39.572 |
| Croatia Airlines | 32.282 |
| Pegasus Airlines | 31.241 |
Istanbul remains the most popular destination from Macedonia (if both Ataturk as Sabiha Gokcen airports are counted) with some 11% of all passengers travelling between the two cities. It is followed by Zurich with an 8.5% market share, then Basel at 5.8%, Vienna at 5.1%, Malmo at 4.6% and Bratislava at 3.5%. The Slovak capital, which is served by Wizz Air from Skopje, has been the city's fastest growing route so far this year with passenger numbers doubling. For comparisons sake, the busiest routes in and out of Skopje Airport for the whole of 2017 can be viewed in the table below.
Commenting on the results, the General Manager of TAV Macedonia, which manages the country's two international airports, Alper Ersoy, said, "These positive trends in air traffic growth, confirm the great potential of the Macedonian aviation market. We will continue to make every effort to develop both Skopje and Ohrid airports, by attracting new airlines and expanding our route network, in cooperation with all relevant state institutions". Jointly, Skopje and Ohrid airports registered 9.033 aircraft movements during the January - June period, which is up 18% on the same period in 2017. The Macedonian Ministry for Transport and Communications recently issued a public call for the submission of applications in order to grant financial support for the launch of new routes from both Skopje and Ohrid. Under the plan the winning airline must introduce at least two new routes from the two cities each by the end of the year. The deadline for the submission of bids has been set for July 28.
Busiest routes out of Skopje Airport - 2017
| Destination | PAX |
|---|---|
| Zurich | 160.547 |
| Istanbul Ataturk | 157.254 |
| Vienna | 120.025 |
| Basel | 98.768 |
| Malmo | 85.732 |
| Istanbul Sabiha | 71.615 |
| London Luton | 69.693 |
| Ljubljana | 55.754 |
| Gothenburg | 54.148 |
| Dortmund | 52.533 |
| Zagreb | 52.362 |
| Cologne | 48.994 |
| Bratislava | 48.873 |
| Belgrade | 46.038 |
| Hahn | 46.004 |
WOW who would have guessed that OU carries more passengers than JU in SKP!
ReplyDeleteIt operates with a bigger capacity aircraft.
DeleteOU's brand is probably stronger than JU's as well.
DeleteI would not say the strength of a brand is the reason, the main one should be the fact Belgrade is much closer than Zagreb and could be reached in 4,5 hrs by car.
DeleteThe bigger surprise is Germania Flug which has only a few flights but handles so many passengers.
DeleteWOW who would have guessed that JA carries more passengers than OU in SKP!
DeleteJA as in JP? No surprise there, Adria is better run than OU.
DeleteActually what is surprising that Adria handled so few passenger yet I think they have the most flights.
Delete@9.56, JP is does not carry more than OU in SKP if you look at the list.
Delete@9.41 they do a lot of charters from Ohrid/Skopje for Albanian tour agencies.
DeleteOh I see. That's right. They are huge in Pristina too.
DeleteThey are actually the busiest airline in PRN.
DeleteI think the STAR frequent flyer program has first mover advantage in Skopje so its well established. This is why OU and Adria have a decent chunk of the traffic.
DeleteThis is crazy 60% share! If it was a ex-Yu airline Wizz would have called them a monopolist.
ReplyDeleteI guess when it comes to domination the situation is a follows: SKP, LJU, ZAG.
DeleteOkay, so literally W6 can very easily be considered the flag carrier of Northern Macedonia.
ReplyDeleteThis is simply incredible.
haha! sneaky one :b
Deleteeasily something like JAT of Yugo
Delete*North Macedonia :)
DeleteRepublic of Macedonia
DeleteThe illegitimate goverment can agree to bad agrements but us macedonians will never accept this treason. So stop with your shitty north or northern jokes.
Interesting that Bratislava is doing so well.
ReplyDeleteNot surprising it is filled with people from Austria/Vienna.
DeleteNow it makes sense why Austrian was complaining about subsidies at SKP for Wizz,
Deleteits too funny now that Wizz; Level and laudaryanair have opened a base in VIE (and getting incentives from VIE) btw Austrian pax are on the rise too but its smaller then SKP's growth so it looks like they "lose" share
DeleteWhen Wizz Air gets the new subsidies that share will only increase.
ReplyDeleteStill wondering what routes will be launched and if the new Vienna route from Ohrid in October will be included as one of the two new routes they have to open from OHD by the end of the year if they win the tender.
DeleteI wonder if ZRH might hit 200.000 soon. SKP is growing really nice and now that it is passing 2 million the government should work to reaching 2.5 and then 3.
ReplyDeleteIt is beyond me that Swiss mainline failed in Skopje.
DeleteThe market is there but it's not willing to pay what Swiss was asking for.
DeleteLH handles SKP exclusevly through Austrian.
DeleteThey do because when they tried to expand they failed.
DeleteOh yes, the market is actually paying what Swiss is asking for. The prices with both Germania and Edelweiss are outrageous for such a short flight (1:40), and are never under 250 EUR return in extremely low season. So Swiss could fill up three daily flights to SKP.
DeleteWith such a big demand, I wonder why Wizz doesn't launch additional frequencies to Basel/Mulhouse (no, there is no bilateral restriction since Wizz is legally using the MLH code, which stands for Mulhouse, France, and therefore enjoys the rights of the Open Skies agreement).
Well Swiss tried SKP and they decided that there was no market for them. My guess is that they are making more money with Edelweiss.
DeleteThat is a massive share!
ReplyDeleteNow that's what I call a monopolist. This is not good for competition.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is well done Wizz.
ReplyDeleteGood job Wizz. They have made air travel accessible to many Macedonians and increased tourism in the country.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Wizz has done wonders for Skopje and has really shaped the market.
DeleteBravo Wizz Air!
ReplyDelete- I have never seen OU in front of the the 3 ex-yu airlines at SKP before which is quiet amazing and shame about JP cancelling those evening flights despite numbers of slovenian tourists almost doubled
ReplyDeletehere is the tourist stats for Macedonia for May 18: overall foreign tourist numbers up +11% (jan-may +19%), happy to see numbers from all ex-yu countries are on the rise.
1. TUR 2.SRB (+37% compared to May 17) 3.BUG 4.GER 5.NED 6.GRE 7.CHINA 8.CRO (+77%) 9.USA 10.SLO (+77%) 11.POL 12.ALB 13.KS (+43%) 14.UK 15.BEL
While I am all for LCCs and congratulate Wizz and Skopje Airport, I really think the management at SKP must attract more legacies.
ReplyDeleteWizz added capacity to Macedonia each year since they started flying which is great. I wish them all the best.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI would like Ryan or Easy to come to provide some competition and offer more choice to passengers other than Wizz.
ReplyDeleteSo Wizz will have over 1.2 million passengers in Macedonia this year?
ReplyDeleteWithout a doubt
DeleteSo H1 Skopje handled more than 946.613 passengers. Thats impressive. As for new routes i believe that it may be Lisbon and Madrid/Bucharest/Sofia/Varna from SKP and from OHD Bergamo and Bremen
ReplyDeleteIs there demand between Skopje and Madrid for year long routes?
DeleteNo and neither for LIS.
Deleteim sure you said that for BCN and Malta as well ...
DeleteSKP-BCN is performing quite badly, it even had a passenger decline, it's the fifth worst performing route with some 31.000 passengers last year.
DeleteLIS specially will be pretty demanded route, will work well on 2x week or can even be made on night flight.
DeleteFrom SOF is working pretty well and loads are good.
lol, how many passengers do you expect when its 2 weekly. 100.00??
DeleteSo flights to BCN are kind of full but are not being increased. I guess loads are there but not yields.
DeleteGood job Skp,Ohd and wizz.
ReplyDeleteBut as many people said in other circumstances this will be monopolism.
I think that this LLC funding needs to stop cause it's killing the competition and it's not fair for the other companies.
What macedonian government needs to work on is getting flights to Europe's 4 main hubs, Ams, Cdg, Lhr, Fra or at least one of them for start.
It's really stupid in 2018 with 2m pax a year and 21% increase not to have this flights.
If I'm not wrong Skopje and Sarajevo are the only two capitals in europe witouth flights to Ams, Lhr, Cdg & Fra
Flights to AMS CDG FRA LHR will not work from SKP, they can't be done with LCC, and Macedonians will never pay 250+eur for a ticket. Future is in LCC in SKP. More routes from WIZZ thats all SKP and OHD needs. Even if Ryan/Easy come, WIZZ will push them out of SKP with adding more planes and routes + TAV is not allowing 2 carriers on same route.
DeleteCroatia Airlines starts to fly from Macedonia to Croatia with new leased CRJ1000 aircraft with Macedonian crew,probably ex-MAT airways pilots.
ReplyDeleteNonsense.
DeleteIN THE LAST 11 YEARS EMPLOYEES,PILOTS AND AERONAUTICAL CREW IN MACEDONIAN AIRPORTS ESPECIALLY IN OHRID AIRPORT, THEIR MONTHLY SALARY IS THE SAME IN LAST 9 YEARS BUT HEIR WORKLOAD HAS BEEN INCREASED BY 89% AND COMPANY PROFIT IN 2018 IS THE SAME AS BEFORE IN 2007 YEAR.
ReplyDeleteThat just tells me that they were overstaffed 11 years ago. If you can find a better job, quit your current one and go get another one.
Delete