Turkish low cost carrier Pegasus Airlines will introduce its second destination to Skopje this coming summer by inaugurating flights between Izmir and the Macedonian capital. Services will commence on June 2 and operate twice per week, each Thursday and Sunday, with the 180-seat Airbus A320 aircraft. Tickets are already on sale through the airline’s website. The carrier will compete directly against SunExpress, which itself will introduce operations between the two cities on June 19. Those flights will run once per week, each Sunday. Pegasus’ new Skopje service will complement its existing flights between Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport and Skopje.
Pegasus Airlines had initially planned to introduce services between Izmir and Skopje back in 2019 but ultimately chose not to do so. That year, Izmir was Skopje’s fourteenth busiest unserved route, as well as Turkish Airlines’ third most popular transfer destination to and from the Macedonian capital, behind only New York and Ankara. A year later, the Turkish coastal city became the ninth busiest unserved point out of Skopje as traffic flows changed due to the coronavirus pandemic and Turkey became an even more popular destination for Macedonian citizens due to accessible entry requirements. In addition to flights from Istanbul’s two airports, since the start of the pandemic, Skopje has seen the introduction of scheduled services from Antalya and Bodrum as well.
Pegasus Airlines also plans to grow its Istanbul - Skopje service by considerably increasing its capacity on the route this summer. The low cost airline will deploy its 239-seat A321neo aircraft on most services to the Macedonian capital, compared to the smaller A320 and Boeing 737-800 it has utilised so far. As a result, the airline’s overall capacity on the route will grow a notable 45.8% this summer compared to the previous year. The carrier plans to continue maintaining eight weekly flights between the two cities.
Further flight details for the new Izmir - Antalya service can be found here.
Great. Skopje is getting a nice collection of new flights this summer. Sofia, Hurghada, Tel Aviv, Turin and Izmir.
ReplyDeleteAnd this year there will be a tender for routes, so Wizz will probably launch new destinations.
DeleteBologna, Billund
DeleteIs this the first city in ex-Yu that Pegasus will be serving from a city other than Istanbul?
ReplyDeleteWe already have multiple flights and options to IST so it's nice to see another point in Turkey added.
ReplyDeleteFor once, great departure times!
ReplyDeleteMuch much better than Sun Express
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/p/sunexpress-izmir-skopje_21.html
Don't know who would choose Sun Express now with that schedule compared to the one offered by Pegasus.
DeleteGuys, the Sun Express is more or less a charter (reserved by mk and tr tour. agents)
DeleteYou can buy tickets online too.
DeleteMany years ago Pegasus used to fly Izmir-Skopje so it's good to see them resuming these flights.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember which year this was?
Deletewhen TAV took over SKP
DeleteThanks. Do you remember, was it year round or seasonal? How many flights were there per week and did how long did they operate?
DeleteThe Izmir-Skopje flights operated during 2011-2012, three times per week, launched at the same time as the SAW-SKP flight, and the flights were supposed to be year round, but they ended up being cancelled.
DeleteThanks for the info. Hopefully they will be more successful this time.
DeleteBut is there really demand for year round to/from Izmir?
DeleteHoping Ankara will be launched next from Turkey.
ReplyDeleteAnadolujet should operate this route. I'm sure they could make a B737-800 twice per week work on this route.
DeleteI would prefer if SKP would try and attract some European legacies like Air France, KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa that can offer good onward connections. We already have so many flights to Turkey.
ReplyDeletelol. There is simply demand for Turkey.
DeleteWhy Lufthansa isn't flying to Skopje ? There is demand for flights to Germany
DeleteBecause Wizz Air flies to 10 cities in Germany, five times a week to Dortmund and Memmingen, three times to Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Hahn.... that is enough.
DeletePegasus have very good onward connections via sabiha Gocken
DeleteHope they look into adding Ohrid as well.
ReplyDeleteOhrid has a lot of potential and the tourism is still not developed to its full potential. So I think we will only see flights grow more and more in the future.
DeleteIs Izmir Airport managed by TAV?
ReplyDeleteMakes sense.
Deleteits such a nice airport btw
Deletecannot agree more. So much better then SAW
DeleteFrom an architecture point of view too. not your "standard" TAV TBS and SKP style
DeleteThis is mostly for tourists but it's still good news.
ReplyDeleteWell Izmir is Turkey's third largest city with a population of over 2 million people.
DeleteThere are a lot of Turkish tourists visiting so I think it is not just about Macedonians going to the Turkish coast.
DeleteThere are also considerable number od Turks from Macedonia in Izmir that still have connection with "the motherland"...
DeleteI would love it if Pegasus would consider launching flights to Ljubljana. Everyone is getting new routes except us :(
ReplyDeleteI feel so sorry but also very angry about the situation in LJU. Yes, like you said. Literally all ex-Yu capitals are getting new routes. But, the good news is the resumption of the many London flights to the city :)
DeleteThere are way more negative news than good news...
DeleteAs a big fan of Turkey, specially of Istanbul and Izmir, I would totally love Pegasus to start flights to Ljubljana. I never really understood why Pegasus does not consider LJU. Loads on flights to Istanbul are very stable with a lot of O&D pax, regardless the TK fares. With Pegasus prices which tend to be much lower and weak local currency in Turkey, the market would explode.
DeleteWill it be seasonal or year round?
ReplyDeleteI would love to see Izmir-Belgrade too. I think there would be demand from both ends.
ReplyDeleteWeird it wasn't introduced a while ago. Two airlines serve this destination from Skopje so there must be something. I don't know if bilateral is limiting this possibility.
DeleteIt's possible North Macedonia has a more liberal agreement with Turkey. The agreement between the 2 was signed alooot later than that with Yugoslavia, which has been a limiting factor. Tensions between Serbia and Turkey in terms of aviation hasn't helped. However since the TK-JU codeshare agreement, TK has launched ESB-BEG where as JU INI/KVO-IST. TK is also returning their 3rd daily flight, which stopped when Serbia insisted that JU be returned its slots in IST, after Turkey revoked them when Jat Airways was rebranded as Air Serbia, forcing the airline to operate from SAW. I think more flights and destinations will come as travel between the 2 will become easier, with citizens of both countries soon not needing passports to travel.
Deletepossible routes in the future:
ReplyDeleteOhrid - Istanbul Sabiha
Skopje - Ankara
Im surprised that Ankara has more tansfer pax to Macedonia then Izmir. Would have thought its the other way round
Well article says Ankara was ahead of Izmir for Turkish Airlines. Maybe there were overall more passengers to Izmir if Pegasus transfer passengers are taken into account.
DeleteIt would be nice to see a Skopje-Heraklion route too. Probably by Wizz , Aegean is not gonna make that move although their flights to Athens seems to perform pretty well.
ReplyDeletePegasus seems to be outperforming both exyu airlines at SKP by pax numbers in the meantime. Hm.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Pegasus is an LCC so prices will be affordable.
ReplyDeleteGreat news for Skopje!
ReplyDelete20% of the tourists in Macedonia are from Turkey so this is no surprise.
ReplyDelete