NEWS FLASH
Flydubai has suspended ticket sales between its hub and Skopje. Services between the two cities were tentatively scheduled to be restored on October 31 after over two and a half years. Operations were to run twice per week. However, tickets are no longer available for purchase between the two cities and new flights have not been scheduled so far. Skopje has lacked services to the Middle East since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with Qatar Airways yet to restore its operations from Doha to the Macedonian capital, while Israir cancelled its initial plans to launch services to the city this year. “Looking at our past experiences, we are confident that the suspended routes will resume when it is convenient for the airlines”, the airport previously told EX-YU Aviation News when questioned about the return of Flydubai and Qatar Airways.
I'm surprised to see this now with Australia opened again, I was expecting both FlyDubai and Qatar to resume their flights. Not sure where is the problem....not enough demand probably...
ReplyDeleteIt's simple. The airport is owned by TAV, the company that operates Turkish Airlines. They give issues to FlyDubai to utilize Istanbul as a hub for Macedonians. Quite byzantine.
DeleteSure thing lol
DeleteIts a monopoly by TAV/Turkish Airlines and a disaster for Macedonians who travel. We are indeed mandated to transfer via Istanbul - which used to be slightly cheaper despite the inconvenience. Now its more expensive without a choice. IST is a massive graveyard of an airport. Our politicians can be bought for a cheap car. Too bad for all us that would come home more often, and now have to subsidize corrupt politicians and the Turkish expansionism with our own money. Sofia is terrible road away filled with corrupt policemen and custom duty officers, Belgrade is 4.5 hours away by car + the Belgrade transit which is becoming shocking, and Thessaloniki has no direct options to most places of importance.
DeleteFly Dubai, Wizzair, Ryan Air: are you listening? As for the politicians that make money with these tenders - I hope you rot in hell.
Yet another airline ditching SKP :( the theory about it being a gasto airport feeding the Albanian diaspora is just reconfirmed. Very few airlines have sustained their flights to SKP.
ReplyDeletemost airports in ex-yugo are gasto's airports exept in Croatia and Montenegro. SKP had better times but it's running oke. SKP serves it''s Macedonian diaspora and Albanian diaspora mostly from Macedonia which are also citizens so that is quite normal. Kosovan Albanians use SKP nowadays very little becasue they improved their own network.
DeleteYet BEG is the only true airport in the region. I guess it's from all the gasto traffic.
DeleteLJU gasto airport? Not at all.
DeleteNot surprised, it's easier to serve this market via Sofia or Thessaloniki.
ReplyDeleteNow we are all sure that they’re gonna start Thessaloniki as Greeks want an SKG-DXB connection a lot.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it's confirmation of the monopoly that Turkish has on all longhaul connections.
ReplyDeletePre covid there were 4 weekly flight to Doha and 3 weekly flights to Dubai. Most routes from SKP recovered for lets say 75% so 3 frequencies a week to the middle east must be possible.Propably profits from SKP to the middle east were not high. I hope that Qatar will resume SKP with the fact that flydubai isn't gonna resume SKP in the near futher.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Amadeus-GDS Flydubai seems to cancel 1 resp. 2 flights per week in July between Ljubljana and Dubai:
ReplyDeleteFZ1790 X24 LJU DXB 1515 2305 0 18JUL22 27JUL22 7M8 5:50