Air France will considerably expand its presence on the Croatian market this summer, with 2020 becoming its third consecutive year of growth in the country. The French carrier will boost frequencies on services from Paris to Zagreb, Dubrovnik and Split. It will commence a second daily flight between Paris and Zagreb from May 5, maintaining a morning and evening departure out of Charles de Gaulle Airport to the Croatian capital. As a result, the aircraft arriving in the evening will stay the night in Zagreb before embarking on its return journey early the next morning. Both daily services will be run by Airbus A320-familly aircraft. At the same time, Croatia Airlines will continue to operate one daily flight between the two cities.
The French carrier will resume its seasonal service between Paris and Dubrovnik at the very start of the summer season, on March 29. Flights will initially run twice per week, up from one last year, before increasing to daily in mid-July, representing an increase of two additional weekly flights. Air France will also resume seasonal services from Paris to Split which were inaugurated last year. Operations will commence on July 14 and will be maintained up to six times per week, up from three weekly flights in 2019. In total, Air France will run an additional five weekly rotations to the Croatian coast this summer.
Delta Air Lines and KLM will codeshare on all of Air France’s flights to Croatia, while Kenya Airways, Croatia Airlines and Flybe have their codes on the carrier’s services to and from Zagreb. Air France said the Croatian coast is becoming more and more popular with tourists. “Growth is happening in both directions. More people are travelling to the world, but also many people are visiting the region - from both a leisure and business perspectives. The area is developing nicely, and I only see further growth possibilities in the future", the General Manager for Air France, KLM and Transavia for Alps, Balkans and Central Europe, Thijs Komen, said recently.
This is excellent news. So an extra 12 flights per week to Croatia by Air France.
ReplyDeleteStrange how DBV doesn't have daily flights with AF? During summer, that is.
DeleteWell it will...
Delete"The French carrier will resume its seasonal service between Paris and Dubrovnik at the very start of the summer season, on March 29. Flights will initially run twice per week, up from one last year, before increasing to daily in mid-July, representing an increase of two additional weekly flights."
Thank you, Anon 10:39, I meant sooner than July.
DeleteSeeing as they have been expanding in Croatia each year, maybe they introduce a new route next year. Which is more likely Pula or Zadar?
ReplyDeleteTransavia is launching Paris (Orly) - Pula this summer. There is also Croatia Airlines and easyjet flying to Charles de Gaulle.
DeleteWhile from Zadar there are no flights to Paris whatsoever. So this could be an opportunity.
DeleteReally? I find it odd that there are no flights from Paris to Zadar. Not even Beauvais??
DeleteNot that I'm aware of.
DeleteZadar - Beauvais
DeleteMay 02 - Lauda
Ah I see now
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/p/lauda-zadar-beauvais.html
Thanks
I think there is a bigger opportunity for them to start Zadar rather than Pula. Less competition and they can operate as a substitute to Split if they can't grow there due to slot restrictions and congestion.
Deletetrès bon :)
ReplyDeleteTrès bien ;) Nice try, dear.
DeleteWow at them spending the night in ZAG. Didn't airlines complain how it's expensive? I doubt keeping an aircraft there for several hours comes cheap.
ReplyDeleteWell even if those claims are true it is a French operated airport and Air France is a French airline. But as far as I remember only LCCs complained about fees.
DeleteLCCs will always complain about the prices. In the end they want to sell 9,99€ tickets to be able to fill their aircraft.
Delete^ Exactly
DeleteLH also spends the night in Zagreb.
DeleteIn fact LH's and AF's planes will be departing within 20 minutes of each other in the morning.
DeleteI assume the evening/morning flights from ZAG give more connection opportunities via CDG?
ReplyDeleteYes it provides an excellent connection to their North America flights.
DeleteOverall around 40% of AF's passengers from Zagreb are point to point and the remaining 60% are transfer passengers
DeleteNice additions, so they will have almost at least daily flights.
ReplyDeleteThey are becoming much more proactive in the region lately.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that they are adding another daily flight to Zagreb and Ljubljana. Meaning they are not worried about the overlap on the market, which is great.
DeleteYes this is excellent news. Granted Adria has been eliminated. I'm not sure what kind of planes they will be using to Ljubljana this summer though.
DeleteBoth daily flights to Ljubljana will be operated by HOP. So E170s and E190s.
DeleteLast summer in ZAG were all flights operated by mainline or were some by HOP?
ReplyDeleteMainline.
DeleteIt has been mainline for a while now.
Delete2016
DeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteBravo Francuska! Bravo Air France!
DeletePity they are not interested in acquiring OU. They could have been a good partner.
ReplyDeleteLOL!
DeleteAir France would have been a good partner?
Maybe marginally better than Alitalia...
Why?
DeleteBecause of company culture and unions.
DeleteJust ask KLM how much they have regretted getting bought by AF 15 years ago.
The Dutch part of the group with smaller salaries and much higher productivity delivers over 90% of the profits.
And at the same time the French unions demand from management that KL is not allowed to grow freely and expand into destinations that are served already by AF.
Attacking Lufthansa?
ReplyDeleteIf they are attacking Lufthansa they have a loooong way to go.
DeleteThey certainly offer a much better on board product, especially if you are connecting onto a long haul flight with them.
DeleteAlthough CDG as an airport has a lot of draw backs.
DeleteCDG has improved a lot recently.It isn't as efficient as MUC is but honestly I prefer it to FRA. If you're staying within Terminal 2E or 2F which if you're flying AF you usually are its just fine. If you have a long layover its a much more pleasant place to spend 2 hours than FRA is.
DeleteYes FRA is a very chaotic and confusing airport. MUC is very nice though. I haven't been to CDG in a long time (probably 10 years) so maybe it's time to give it another shot.
DeleteCDG is going to become the busiest airport in Europe surpassing LHR soon, probably in 2-3 years. The stats prove that. AF's presence is starting to be felt everywhere in Europe.
DeleteThe only airport (due to its location and capacity that will be completed in 5-6 years) can challenge CDG is IST. But AF has a poor coverage there though, probably can't compete with TK against 7 daily to CDG (most of them with wide bodies even in winter).
I was at CDG a few years back. Big airport but thought it was pretty good.
DeleteKLM runs 14 weekly AMS-SPU. Wonder when KLM will start AMS-DBV..
ReplyDeleteYes, surprising they haven't already.
DeleteI think KL will indeed start flights soon that is why they moved transavia from Rotterdam to Dbv instead of Amsterdam.
DeleteAlthough I think they will be sending more of the A318 to Dubrovnik instead of A319/A320.
ReplyDeleteThe A318 is in the process of retirement so they won't operate for too long.
DeleteYes they are being replaced by A220s which have bigger capacity than their A319s.
DeleteNot sure how good this is for Croatia Airlines. AF will now have more flights than OU on French-Croatia routes.
ReplyDeleteHow many times per week does OU fly from Dubrovnik and Split to Paris?
DeleteDuring high season they have 5 weekly flights from Dubrovnik and three weekly from Split.
DeleteThis is a very good alternative compared to Lufthansa for flights to North America. And like someone said they generally offer a better product.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you people checked the fares for their Croatia flights but they are surprisingly cheap. They are selling tickets to Zagreb as low as 60 euros per way.
ReplyDeleteI think they currently have a sale on.
DeleteKenya Airways codesharing on AF flights to Zagreb???
ReplyDeleteYes since December
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2019/12/kenya-airways-adds-zagreb-ljubljana.html
Nice :D to Ljubljana too.
DeleteMaybe they eventually turn Dubrovnik to a year round flight.
ReplyDeleteWhat for? TK has reduced Dubrovnik in winter.
DeleteTK can't compete with QR in Dubrovnik!
DeleteTK has both financial and fleet issues.
DeletePlus the expensive new airport plus low cost competition from Pegasus over at SAW.
Financial problems???
DeleteWith most carriers increasing DBV or announcing new flights, TK is decreasing them. Odd!
DeleteThey have a fleet issue. The MAX planes are grounded.
DeleteThe MAX is not flying before August. And 12 weekly to DBV is not too bad considering TK flies other destinations too and need to fly there where they used the MAX last year.
Delete@Anon 10:20 and 10:30
DeleteIt's QR that can't compete with TK in DBV. The only reason that TK reduced DBV from 14 to 10 is the grounded 24 MAX airplanes. QR has no grounded MAX airplanes like TK.
To give you an idea about the capacity of TK's grounded MAX's is higher 1.5 times higher than whole AS's fleet and 3times bigger than OU's whole fleet's capacity.
Ryanair also decided to close some of its hubs because of the grounded MAX deliveries, same as Norwegian, or Southwest in US, etc...
It's nothing to do with the competition with QR, TK kills each ME3 carriers in wider Balkans and Ex-Yu.
TK was able to destroy every carrier it competed, but those days seem to be over. With the new airport in Istanbul, its operational costs soared, reducing its cost advantage over other carriers significantly. Adding the MAX issues and Turkey's slowing economic growth on top made life harder for TK.
DeleteGive the airport some time. They didn't spend 15 billion USD for an airport just to increase the operational costs. 3th paralel runway will be finished on 18th of June, and total passenger capacity of 200 million will reach in 2028. It's been 8 months that the airport is on service and handled more than 55 millions passengers. It's a huge investment for the future, not today.
DeleteAnonymous at 12:19
DeleteAll that huge investment and the loans that funded it will have to be repaid by the users of the airport.
And especially from the largest airline using it, the is TK.
Meanwhile all neighboring to Turkey countries are in rapid expansion of their air services and the need of connections to IST decreases.
Plus PG in much cheaper SAW which is also closer to the city of Istanbul than the new airport.
Okay we are totally out of topic, I just have to correct a mistake.
DeleteSAW is not closer to city center of Istanbul than IST and Istanbul's city center lies on European side, and railway to the new airport will be completed this year, you will be able to reach within 45 mins.
Time will show your statements regarding the new airport. Many legacies are starting to fly to IST this year (Like ANA, Garuda Indonesia, China Eastern etc...). It will obviously have an impact on other European hubs.
Legacies starting to fly to IST this year (Like ANA, Garuda Indonesia, China Eastern etc) will overwhelmingly impact TK and its flights to their home airports.
DeleteThe European hubs have much larger increase in longhawl flights both from their domestic carriers and the airlines who are attacking TK's monopoly in IST.
And yes, SAW is far closer to the city of IST the same way that LHR is closer to London than STN is.
I wonder to which destination people transfer with them the most from the Croatian market.
ReplyDeleteProbably New York.
DeleteDoesn't have to be the case really. Usually its points in western Europe that are not served directly from ZAG and then comes TATL destinations.
DeleteI work as travel agent. We sell AF/KL a lot to USA (the DL codeshare covers all of the US), Canada, South and Central America, UK (KL especially), North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia), as well as Northern Europe and from time to time Spain and France.
DeleteThanks :)
DeleteAnd doesn't Trade Air operate flight for Air France too?
ReplyDeleteYes they do in summer.
DeleteYes this year too.
DeleteGreat news!
ReplyDeleteEspecially for Zagreb.
DeleteNice to see a legacy airline growing on the market.
DeleteThese are nice developments considering they launched Dubrovnik in 2018 and Split in 2019.
ReplyDeleteAnother great year ahead for Croatian airports.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI just hope they don't push out OU on this route. AF is offering heavily discounted fares at the moment.
ReplyDeleteThey both cooperate with each other. They won't push each other out.
DeleteDon't be so sure.
DeleteAF and JP also used to code-share.
DeleteSo this summer in Zagreb is not looking that bad at all, despite all the gloom and doom scenarios.
ReplyDeleteTrue. New flights by British Airways, Air France, Iberia and Air Serbia, increased capacity by Aegean, most probably new routes by Croatia Airlines to Podgorica, Tirana and Sofia
DeleteNow you should list all the decreases, capacity cuts and suspensions.
DeleteAs far as I'm aware these include the termination of Swiss and CSA flights, the suspension of two routes by Euwoings and the refuction of capacity by Aeroflot.
DeleteThere will surely be more announcements for S20 in Croatia!
DeleteThere will be four Croatia as a whole but I'm not so sure about Zagreb.
DeleteWell will these increases offset the cuts?
Deleteall decreases and increases taken into the account, Zagreb should roughly see a +5% increase during 2020. For now...
DeleteAwesome. Good to see Sky team expanding.
ReplyDeleteIn Croatia i mean
DeleteThe AF/KL expansion in Croatia is obviously getting more significant.
ReplyDeleteThat said, those flights can only trigger and persuade DL to launch flights from its ATL hub to DBV and ZAG. They have an extreme presence in CDG too.
Not to mention that ZAD can also try a long-haul SkyTeam destination such as EWR or ATL.
Yes, and RJK to Portland, Oregon. BWK to Cincinatti as well. OMG, you people really not aware ZAG has no NYC connection and you talk ZAD to ATL. I don't believe it
DeletePozdrav iz Rijeke, since when is Zagreb so relevant when it comes to direct flights to other Croatian cities from the US? Dubrovnik has direct flights to the US which is not the case with Zagreb .
DeleteOvo je udar na CA barem što se Zagreba tiče. Mislim da će CA morati odustati od ove linije.
ReplyDeleteMalo sutra ce odustati. Linija je godinama bila rudnik s napuhanim cijenama. Oba carriera su imali odlican LF takodjer. 2 x godine prilagodbe i sve ce bit ok. Nije CDG selo i putnika ima i bit ce ih. Hrvatsku svake godine posjecuje sve veci broj turista iz egzoticnih zemalja.
DeleteIsto ko Adria, ciao CA.
Delete