Low cost carrier Wizz Air will introduce its second service to Ljubljana, from London Luton, complementing its existing flights from Charleroi. It will mark the airline’s return on the route following a two-year hiatus. The carrier suspended flights between the two capitals in October 2019. The Luton service will commence on December 13 and operate three times per week, each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with the 230-seat Airbus A321 aircraft. The budget carrier faces no direct competition on the route, although easyJet maintains flights to Gatwick Airport, while British Airways runs seasonal operations from Heathrow. easyJet will launch services from Luton to Ljubljana next summer season, from March 27. It was initially to commence in 2020 but was delayed a number of times due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to Covid-19, London was Ljubljana Airport’s busiest route with Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted all being served from the Slovenian capital. In 2019, almost 227.000 passengers flew on nonstop flights between Ljubljana and London, while a further 9.672 travellers flew indirectly via other points in Europe. Stansted was the busiest with 45% of all of Ljubljana’s London passengers flying to and from the airport. The route was served by easyJet and has since been terminated due to the closure of the airline’s base at Stansted. Luton was Ljubljana’s second busiest London airport until Wizz Air terminated the route.
Wizz Air performance on London Luton - Ljubljana route
Ljubljana Airport’s outgoing General Manager, Zmago Skobir, said last week that the operator’s main goal is to increase traffic but that the future remains uncertain. “For the first time in my almost twenty-year career at the airport, and another fourteen years at Adria Airways, we find ourselves unable to accurately predict the future. The Covid-19 pandemic has had severe consequences for the aviation sector and the tourism industry. It is hard to guess what will happen. The airport’s goal will be to return traffic so the operator can continue to generate revenue and respond to new aviation trends”, Mr Skobir said. Last month the General Manager noted the airport was in talks with several low cost airlines over introducing new flights to the Slovenian capital.
Further flight details for the new London Luton - Ljubljana service can be found here.
Good news for Ljubljana finally
ReplyDeleteIt's good but it would be nicer if we had more diverse network. Not London again.
DeleteIf you take almost any EU capital airport, you will see that London is always the top destination.
DeleteWizz and Easy old conflict before pandemic continues...
DeleteHow come there is so much demand between London and Ljubljana?
ReplyDeleteBrits like Slovenia
DeleteUK is one of the largest tourist market for Slovenia.
DeleteAlso, the flights to London from Ljubljana are used by quite a lot of people from nearby cities.
Deletesurprising that the market didn't get saturated.
DeleteLondon is a city with continuous demand. Business, tourism, study, gasto...
DeleteEven during ex-yu times, in addition to daily LHR from BEG and ZAG, and several weekly LHR flights from all coastal airports in the summer, JAT operated 3 weekly B727 LJU-LHR , year-round. So, yes, market to LON from LJU was always there
DeleteTimes has changed. Accept that.
Delete^ Well it obviously hasn't in this case since its still the busiest route from LJU.
DeleteThere even used to be Ljubljana-London Southend flights not too long ago.
Delete@An. 09.41
Delete???
@Anon 09:53: That was MBX-SEN, the pinnacle of know-how in JP.
DeleteLet's hope this is a sign of things to come.
ReplyDeleteHopefully more new routes and airlines are to come. Maybe Wizz Air adds a new destination?
DeleteI really hope so. There are many potential destinations they could introduce.
DeleteLjubljana will become the only ex-Yu capital to be served from so many different airports in London.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear, even TIA fly from 4 different London airports!
DeletePrimarily because of big Albanian diaspora in the UK.
DeleteAnd?
DeleteWell it's response where you say "even" as if every airport should have flights to all of London's airports.
DeleteFirst of all, the original comment wasn't mine and i don't think that's what he meant. He/she wanted to say that also TIA has flights to 4 London airports.
DeleteWould have preferred a different destination to be honest.
ReplyDeleteWell it's at least something
DeleteGood job Fraport!
ReplyDeleteHas nothing to do with Fraport
DeleteWho then?
DeleteIf Fraport was doing good job at LJU, we would see way more new routes. Hopefuly the new manager is not so incompetent as Skobir. He couldn't find a new airline for STN-LJU, route that had more than 120k passengers in 2019.
DeleteExcellent news
ReplyDeleteThings are finally starting to move at LJU
ReplyDeleteGood news. But like others, I would prefer different destinations, such as Barcelona
ReplyDeleteUnlikely since they don't have a base there.
DeleteAs far as I'm aware they don't have a base in Charleroi but they still fly to Ljubljana from there/
DeleteIs this seasonal just for the winter or will it fly through the whole year?
ReplyDeleteThey are only selling tickets till the end of March but I'm sure it will be year round.
DeleteMaybe another destination in the UK could also work.
ReplyDeleteManchester, Liverpool, and Edinburgh could work.
DeleteLJU to Manchester or Birmingham would be perfect, not everyone wants to visit London.
DeleteWell more people want to travel to London than to Birmingham, that's for sure:)
DeleteI think there is a lot of potential for Wizz Air in Ljubljana. Why have they not done more?
ReplyDeleteI see potential for them to start some routes in Scandinavia and Spain.
DeleteLJU should support Wizz Air to add Barcelona and Lisbon to Ljubljana!
DeleteHigh airport charges, high refueling prices, state taxes and other charges are not compatible with W6 business model.
DeleteLet's hope the new manager will lower some of these charges.
DeleteI think easyJet made a mistake by launching Luton when they could have resumed Stansted. At least LJU could be connected to 4 London airports.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Southend is probably one of the biggest failures as an airport and will remain with almost no flights this winter! Even the future OTP-SEN is not bookable for November. Crazy times for an airport that used to handle 2 million passengers!
But Stansted was discontinued because easyjet closed its base there.
DeleteIt's not SEN's fault really. Its expansion was based on other LON airport already being at capacity. Covid changed that and very few airlines are prepared to accept SEN operational restrictions where there's capacity at other airports.
DeleteHope to see more LCC flights in Ljubljana soon. But LJU is having a lot of competition: Trieste, Klagenfurt, Graz, Zagreb are the closest. A lot of Slovenians (from central and western part of the country) use Venice airport. it's quite close, 2,5hrs by car from Ljubljana. VCE has very good connections all round Europe, and also with some destinations in US, Dubai...A lot of different companies, also low cost.
ReplyDeleteTake me for example. I'm 1.5h away from LJU and 2.5h away from Venice but i have flown out of Venice around 5 times more than from LJU. And the main reason-a ton of LCC routes.
DeleteLjubljana should have approached Wizz Air and offered them to open a base there to compete against Ryanair in Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteAgree.
DeleteLooks like that Brits really like Slovenia
ReplyDeleteI don't know anybody who was in SLO and did not like it...
DeleteI know.
Delete+1
DeleteHopefully more new routes and airlines are to come under new LJU CEO.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Wizz numbers. How are they performing on Charleroi route?
ReplyDeleteFinally new LCC route to Ljubljana after some years. Pity its London AGAIN!
ReplyDeleteGood! Now we will come from 13% to 14% compared to 2019. Good job! #SarcasmOFF
ReplyDeleteWhat makes them think Luton will work this time around if it didn't work before?
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think LTN didn't work for Wizz? They obviously stopped LTN for other reasons (read capacity, their other battles ie. VIE and so on). Wizz to LTN had very good LF. Remember they also stopped CRL for the same reasons, but then changed their mind and now again CRL has very good LF from LJU. Things are usually not so straight-forward in aviation anymore.
DeleteThey probably got the loads at the expense of decent yields.
DeleteLjubljana was terminated because Wizz Air was expanding and introducing new routes from Luton, which they believed were more strategically important for them at the time. Now they have managed to get new slots and are returning Ljubljana.
DeletePerhaps Paris Beauvais could work for Wizz now that Adria is out of the picture.
ReplyDeleteParis is served by Air France.
DeleteI think there was a news about some time ago that Transavia will launch LJU-ORY
DeleteThey still have these flights on their site, but not on sale.
DeleteWell it's at least something. I see this as a beginning with more routes to be added in the future, maybe two, maximum three.
ReplyDeleteThey must really love Slovenia very much (interests?) because with extremely high covid numbers (look at the ECDC covid map): Slovenia is still on the green list meanwhile many countries with way better situation are not.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair they should put most ex-Yu countries on their red list but they haven't, except for Montenegro. That involves expensive hotel quarantine.
DeleteOk I would have been more excited if they launched a new destination rather than just a different airport from a city already served from LJU. Better something than nothing.
ReplyDeleteOut of all the London routes, Heathrow and British are most valuable to LJU and the airport should do more to get them to extend their season.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a pre-emptive strike against easyjet.
ReplyDeleteWhat about FR resuming STN-MBX? There should be demand to and from Maribor!
ReplyDeleteThey only flew that route while money was being given to them. When some pulled out from financing it, so did Ryanair from operating the route.
DeleteIn 2007 they had around 90% LF on their 3 weekly flights on STN-MBX.
DeleteSad thing is there are only 3 LCCs in Ljubljana and 4 LCC routes, three of which are London!
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteAnd there is space for Vueling, Norwegian and Pegasus in my opinion.
DeleteNorwegian is a dead man. I don't think they will be opening too many new routes.
DeleteAlso not sure about Pegasus. I think the majority of Turkish Airlines' passengers from and to Ljubljana are transfers.
DeleteNorwegian started serious recovery and so far they have been successful.
DeleteI think there are opportunities for them from Scandinavia to Ljubljana - Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen.
DeleteGothenburg also has quite a lot indirect pax , so it could be added to this list of possible routes.
DeleteThere is definitely place for WizzAir and Vueling, not so sure about Norwegian. Pegasus doesn't make sense because Turkish has a good reputation in LJU and is also performing pretty good.
DeleteTK performing good in LJU means that Pegasus doesn't make sense?
DeleteTurkey is quite popular in Slovenia and I strongly believe there is a market for a 2x/week SAW-LJU-SAW.
DeletePobeda should launch 2-3 weekly VKO-LJU. Demand between Ljubljana and Moscow is really big.
DeleteWhy doesn't BA go year round to Ljubljana?
ReplyDeleteOr at least from March until October.
DeleteThey need to find new airline for STN. Ryanair could operate daily STN-LJU without a problem, but unfortunately LJU is too expensive for them.
ReplyDeleteTime for Ryanair to join the party. Market is big enough for all four airlines.
DeleteGood news for Luton resumptions. FlyDubai on the other hand is expected to land tomorrow afternoon with their Max 8 ;)
ReplyDeleteJust had a look on ther website; january flights are 100€+, meanwhile easyjet has them listed for 18€. What are they trying to do?
ReplyDeleteThe question is, what is your point and what would you like to do?
DeleteIf you checked their homepage you could see it's skyscanner in the background. So airport has nothing to do with it.
Long, long time ago topics were MAT Airways, Adria, B&H Airlines, Montenegro Airlines, Jat etc. Now it's mostly Ryan and Wizz.
ReplyDeleteDanke Deutschland!
DeleteDanke incompetence and nepotism!
DeleteBritish is currently going insane on ljubljana-heatrow flight. Average load factor is arround 90% as far as I know and last flight I was on was full so I am not supprised why so many airlines fly to london.
ReplyDeleteEven PRN had more BA flights this summer.
DeleteSkopje-Ljubljana, airline with great potential
ReplyDeleteManchester or Liverpool would be very welcome for us third-class citizens who dare to live outside of London.
ReplyDelete