The 24 commercial airports in the former Yugoslavia handled a combined total of 13.838.674 passengers during the January - July period, with several already well ahead of their pre-Covid performance including Pristina, Sarajevo, Zadar, Banja Luka and Portorož. Zadar Airport recorded its busiest month ever this July, with similar figures expected this month. It is the first in Croatia to surpass its pre-pandemic performance, with the surge in traffic primarily fuelled by Ryanair, which stationed a third aircraft in the city this summer and launched a number of new routes. Banja Luka Airport has already achieved its busiest year on record, surpassing every annual end-of-year result by the end of July.
Airport performance, January - July 2022
Portorož continues to maintain its position as Slovenia’s second busiest airport, however, unlike its two other counterparts in the country, it is achieving record results. During the first seven months of the year, it handled 19.557 travellers, despite lacking regular scheduled flights. The figure represents an increase of 16% on the same period in 2019. Airports that are closing in on their pre-pandemic performance include Belgrade, Zagreb, Split, Skopje, Podgorica and Niš, with the latter three having already registered their busiest July on record. During the first seven months of the year, Maribor, which lacks scheduled commercial flights, had the least number of passengers in the former Yugoslavia.
Tivat and Pula have taken up the unflattering position as being among the fifteen slowest recovering airports in Europe. Both have been impacted by the ongoing war in Ukraine, with a loss of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian tourists. In 2019, a total of 631.561 passengers flew between Moscow and Tivat alone, with services from a number of other Russian cities, including Saint Petersburg, which accounted for 62.147 travellers. Furthermore, last summer, Ukraine International Airlines maintained twelve weekly flights to Tivat from four Ukrainian cities, while SkyUp Airlines operated twelve weekly services from three cities, and Windrose Airlines ran two weekly rotations from the Ukrainian capital.
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I'm really surprised how well Portoroz it's doing considering they don't have scheduled flights.
ReplyDeleteI think they even want to extend the runway.
DeleteI think they can't due to some hill being there on the other side.
DeleteEvery runway has two sides
DeleteSea is on the other side
DeleteCannot they build runaway in the sea, creating artificial peninsula to accommodate the runaway? There are several such kind of examples, so saying extension is not possible is simply not true.
DeleteWhether that is financially feasible and if it ever be, that is another question.
My guess is that since they have not done it until now there is a reason why it can't be done. Who knows, maybe someone on the other side is refusing to sell his land or whatever. Portoroz has potential especially for tourism.
DeleteZAD will have more passengers than Ljubljans this year.
ReplyDeleteI think that was the case last year too.
DeleteLJU 2021 - 430943 passengers, up 47.6% on 2020
DeleteZAD 2021 - 513093 passengers, up 323,86% on 2020
Not bad at all
ReplyDeletePRN and ZAG are neck and neck. Wonder who will have more passengers by the end of the year.
ReplyDeletePRN no doubt as their passenger structure is more stable, gasto demand doesn't fluctuate as much.
DeleteZagreb, 3.0 million this year,
DeleteDamn ... BEG is really distancing itself from the rest of the ex-YU gang. Good for them. With a strong winter season there will most likely be an even bigger gap.
ReplyDeleteBy far the best run airport in the region. Two airlines based there, massive investments, growing passenger numbers and so on.
DeleteThe only exyu airport with enough potential and well run national carrier that even if they launched something crazy like Mexico City or Singapore, I would be like "Damn, this could work"
DeleteHow sad it is that we speak of BEG-SIN as remote possibility and "something crazy", actually unlikely to happen, and we had it, on regular basis, on wide body, three weekly, 30 and 40 years ago. For everything else I agree, BEG is the only airport in ex-yu doing good and serious job in synergy of its operator and flag carrier. Congratulations for that!
DeleteWell this year we are getting BEG-HAV which I think was never served in SFRJ. If this route becomes a success then I am sure we will see more exotic long-haul flights.
DeleteTrue, Havana is about to come,and it was never operated during Yugo times, and I am glad about it, and that's why I said BEG is the only one in ex you doing something. But my post was about something else, about Montreal, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Calcutta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney, which we don't have any more. And yes, times changed, and yes MEB3 and TK took over great deal of East pax, alliances were formed, took over great deal of West pax, but if only ex-yu remained as a single market if only we hadn't the war and I he theft that followed, ex you wide, and if JAT Yugoslav Airlines were still there as the flag carrier, are you able to even imagine what giant of the company it could have been today, and what would the network out of BEG, its main base and hub, looked like, considering the levels of JAT's and Yugoslavia's development from its top time, 1985-1990
DeleteWell JU restored JFK so that's a start and I dare say that JU will have a really strong position there next summer with daily flights.
DeleteChicago is the next destination to be brought back along with Beijing. I'm sure Toronto will come with the third A332 along with Shanghai.
Btw did JAT ever fly to Shanghai and Hong Kong?
DeleteI listed above JAT destinations not operated today from BEG. There were no regular flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong, however charters were operated to Hong Kong, both passenger and cargo, on B707
DeleteAnon @16:11 Not so sure about Toronto nad Shanghai when 3rd A330 arrives.
DeleteShanghai Belgrade route is apparently eyeballed by another Chinese airline. Air Serbia might get a permission to fly to another airport, similar to PEK/TSN in case of Hainan.
Toronto was apparently dismissed by Air Serbia on other grounds, not on lack of aircraft. Air Serbia could have launched Toronto with arrival of 2nd A330 but made a decision to skip Toronto and launch Chicago instead. Any shortcomings of BEG-YYZ route (as perceived by Air Serbia) would still be there if/when 3rd A330 arrives, with possible exception to entry limitations. At this point route seems to be more likely to be launched by an airline from Canada.
I don't think another Chinese airline has shown interest for BEG-PVG, no one has reported it and there was no mention of it. I think at this point it's just wishful thinking.
DeleteNo one reported Hainan was interested in flying to Belgrade until weeks before route was launched.
DeleteWhere do you find the passenger numbers for some airports
ReplyDeleteExcellent article! Very informative. After reading it and looking at the results of the smaller airports I found myself thinking "if Bor had a small airport, I'm sure people would use it in the summer for charters or even flights to TIV/DUB during the summer. Lot of foreign workers there and the town is pretty far from any other airports.
DeleteBor actually has an airport albeit with a grass runway. It's just outside the city towards Zajecar.
DeleteBor has an airport with a paved runway, no grass. And it is 1.000 m long. ATR 42 STOL could land.
DeleteSarajevo moving ahead of Podgorica by quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteThat is true. Sarajevo was always behind Tivat, Podgorica and Ljubljana. This is realy improvement for Sarajevo.
DeleteLook im not saying Ljubljana is doing great... But considering all (no adria, lack of planes, delays and cancelations) they aren't doing as bad as we all expected.
ReplyDeleteNext year (if there isn't a huge economic crash in winter) we should see semi - decent numbers
Especially if Lauda really is to base a plane or two there
DeleteI agree. There were two massive shocks for LJU in a period of just less than half a year. As we see, airlines are increasing frequencies to LJU, which is a good sign of going in right direction.
DeleteNot bad? For air connectivity LJU ranks 378 out of 467 airports in Europe, and Slovenia as a the worst in Europe.
Deletei applied for ryanair interview in Maribor next week. they called me next day and sent me email with all instructions. so i guess they are actually looking for staff (maybe for zagreb hehe)
DeleteAnn 9:26
DeleteLet's not kid ourselves even without covid LJU would hardly reach 1.5million pax in 2020 the gap without adria is big
On their official site it says the work location is Ljubljana.
DeleteKraljevo having more passengers than Mostar speaks volumes at how badly managed Mostar is. I would be embarrassed.
ReplyDeleteIf I was the LJU management I would be even more embarrased. From 3. busiest airport 10 years ago to barely in top 10 now.
DeletePristina is ahead of Zagreb :o
ReplyDeleteMaybe EK should consider PRN.
DeleteI think PRN has been ahead of Zagreb all of this year and last year. But ZAG is beginning to catch up,
DeleteI wonder if Split will end up ahead of ZAG this year
DeleteZAG 2021 - 1,404,478 passengers, up 52% on 2020
DeletePRN 2021 - 2,180,809 passengers, up 97% on 2020
Yeah, Pristina used to be neck and neck with Skopje but they recovered really quickly after covid and has been ahead of Zagreb ever since.
DeleteZAG is catching up though...it would be interesting to see the results after August in a few days. Then we have another two summer season months, November which is usually slow and December traditionally better... however, given the World Cup starting on November 20 this year, it's quite possible for ZAG overtake PRN this year.
I don't think the world cup will have any major impact on ZAG numbers. I mean how many Croats will go there? 5.000? 10.000 maximum so not enough to have any meaninful impact. I think inflation in Croatia and rising electricity costs will affect travel much more.
DeletePristina same had some big activities during August, Sunny Hill festival, Manifesta Art bienale, 3 International sports activities, Pristina Film Festival (this year join with Odesa Film Festival, Prizren Doku Festival and 2-3 other festivals. Last year PRN had 360k+, and I belive these numbers this year are higher. So don't belive ZAG will be ahead.
DeleteFormer Yugoslavia’s 24 airports handle 13.8 million passengers - now that’s just sad. So much grandstanding, that is so typical for the Balkans, yet we are all really just arguing who is least bad.
ReplyDeleteAgree. 13.8 million passengers for 7 months divided over 24 airports is a terrible result
DeleteWhere some see failure others see an opportunity. Ex Yu region is underserved. Next decade will bring significant growth opportunities to some airports.
DeleteI think this is the first time we have results for every single airport in ex-Yu. Nice!
ReplyDeleteNot for Mostar.
DeleteINI not that far behind of Tuzla anymore.
ReplyDeleteGood recovery by most
ReplyDeleteHow do the top exyu airports compare to the rest of the region?
ReplyDeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDelete5 MILLION air passengers for Croatia, and that's excluding August and the remainder of 2022 !!
haters comments, start your engines, begin in 3, 2, 1, now.....
Noone ever denied that Coratia is the biggest market as the country, but I don't see much to say Bravo as most ot the numbers are tourists travel during 3 months during the year.... And 6 months a year (winter) most of the airports are basically dead. With touristoc potential, Croatia should have 15-20 milion passenger and season should be at least 8 months and then it will actually deserve Bravo.
DeleteAnd yes, Belgrade alone has 1/2 of traffic of whole Croatia.... So, I can say only Bravo, Beograde!
You mean Serbia has 1/2 the amount of traffic?
DeleteNo, Belgrade has
DeleteCroatian airports on the coast do well because of tourism and because foreign tour agencies sell tour packages. That said, Croats need to work on reducing seasonality and that is where they are failing. Also I might be wrong, but with the exception of ZAD, all other airports in the country are below 90% of their 2019 numbers.
DeleteWith Belgrade having double the population of Zagreb, BEG is definitely underperforming....
DeleteNevertheless, Croatia is currently #1 in the Balkans regarding decentralized air traffic, which any economist would argue is better for GDP growth then centralized air traffic to one city.
@An.11.16
DeleteCroatia had numbers of passengers you talk about while in ex-yu, 30-40 years ago. The only difference, majority of those passengers flew to and from Croatia on at those times domestic, Yugoslav companies. Today, Croatian "pride" OU brings less than 10 % of tourists that come to Croatia by air. If you Bravo Hrvatska to that and if I am hater for saying it, OK, let it be so
Centralized aviation is a must if you have geography like Serbia, Hungary, Czechia and so on. Obviously HR needs to have several airports when its geography demands it.
DeleteFurthermore let me remind you that the table above shows that Serbia indeed has several airports which are operational. Latest addition is KVO which is growing at its own pace despite real runway restrictions.
Anon 15:39 Prvi put čujem za ekonomsku kategoriju "decentralized air traffic", to mora da je zagrebački specijalitet. Šta predlažeš, da se otcepe Istra i Dalmacija kako bi Hrvatska ostala sa ZAG i OSI? Tu bi se lakše poredila sa BEG i INI?
DeleteТо је само изговор како би се оправдали. Чињеница остаје да су лети јаки искључиво због западних туристичких агенција које продају пакет аранжмане. Када дође зиме и када локалци се морају доказати у смањивању сезоналности е ту настане проблем. Побогу па зими Ниш има више путника од Сплита и Дубровника, о чему ми причамо. Србија је активирала и Краљево које ће се лепо развијати у складу са својим могућностима. Србија имам сасвим довољан број аеродрома и све преко овога би било комерцијално неисплативо.
DeleteSerbia needs few more airports, but not for commercial civil aviation and scheduled flights, but rather small taxi planes and maybe some cargo (but not jumbo size). With growing roads network and investment in the rails,, distances are getting smaller, but still some parts like east and Southwest Serbia will remain less connected by roads and rails
DeleteI don't think there is a need for more airports as the ones we have now are all in a different part of the country so everything is covered. As the road infrastructure improves there will be less and less need for more airports. Travel times will be considerably reduced.
DeleteWith majority of BEG expansion finishing next year and with a growing influx of long haul flights supplemented with additional short to medium haul flights, BEG could very well reach 10 mil by 2028 approximately (I'm just guessing here). With VINCI expansion projected to handle 15 million, it is kind of already obvious BEG will reach that well before the concession end. Is there any plan to further expand if this happens? Just wondering, please don't go off at me if I missed any info.
ReplyDeleteWith Kazan selling like hot cakes,I expect this to encourage JU to add more flights and destinations all around.
DeleteLJU the worst of all capitals of ex-YU #
ReplyDeleteLJU results are beyond horrible. I dont know if any capital city in EU have that number of passengers and many of them dont have national airline*
ReplyDeleteTivat is really in bad situation. It would be nice to see how many passages are from Serbia in this 300k
ReplyDelete250k passengers are from the Belgrade Tivat route. So probably many Serbians have flown on this route. I have never been on this route so I really don't know how much transfer pax Airserbia get on this route. But this year 60k Russians have visited Montenegro by plane so probably many of them Used Airserbia to get to Montenegro.
DeleteMontenegrin diaspora almost exclusively uses JU, just look at the number of transfers from JFK to TGD. CDG is especially popular from MNE on JU.
DeleteWhere can I find these numbers?
DeleteCan SJJ overtake SKP at some point?
ReplyDeleteOf course
DeleteThis is a real jump for SJJ. They were always behind even Podgorica, Tivat and Ljubljana. Now after Covid19 they had this job because government removed that insan taxes and open a space for low cost airlines like WizzAir.
DeleteCroatia is absolute winner in EX YU. BEG on the other hand compared to ZAG is not performing well because Belgrade has double population compared to Zagreb. Serbian diaspora is much higher compared to Croatian and Croatia has 7-8 airports in use on a small teritory. Also it is easy for Croats to travel from Trieste, Venice…so considering all this i would not say that Belgrade aiport is performing so amazing. Also i would like to know how profitable are some routes as i have feeling that some of them are only for prestige. It is great that airport BEG is growing and that more and more lines are operating but when we look on numbers and when we compare the results it is not so brilliant*
ReplyDeleteZagreb and Frankfurt are the same size, so Zagreb is doing terribly
Deletehttps://imgur.com/gallery/dTcAHZc
DeleteHa ha ha awesome response! Keep in mind BEG is increasing passenger gap over ZAG despite one prestige airline deciding to base couple of planes at ZAG airport.
DeleteBelgrade is growing not just one compononent but EuroMed, charter as well as long haul destinations faster than Zagreb. Air Serbia is getting second A320 and second widebody while modernizing ATR fleet. Overall Air Serbia fleet age by year end will be much younger than OU fleet age. Belgrade Nikola Tesla airport will have capabilities unmatched in the Exyu region from next year.
DeleteOn the other hand, Ryan didn't bring explosive growth to ZAG, Croatia Airlines are retreating from ZAG to SPU so no wonder self proclamed analysts and fanboys are getting upset.
@An.22.27, hat down and deep bow. The answer why ZAG is way behind BEG, and will remain, probably forever, is in lack of any kind of strategy for civil aviation in HR, and lack of synergy between "flag carrier" and its "hub" ZAG. Once again, all answers are in failed, rotten, corrupt and incompetent OU. But God forbid to say it loudly, Kradeze bots are immediately calling you hater, asking you to take mAdikejsn and trying to make relevant totally irrelevant city size comparison.
DeleteThose Serbia vs Croatia aviation is kinda outta place.
DeleteCroatia is a country visited by over 15 million people and has 9 operational airports compared to Serbia's 3. Not to mention that 2 of its airports have less than 200 thousand passengers annually.
Air Serbia, similar to Turkish Airlines, is heavily funded and backed by the government. We also witness a strong protectionism in BEG. No wonder why we barely see Wizzair expansions or the arrival of Ryanair for such a bigger country.
It is still too early to judge on Ryanair in ZAG as most of the routes are brand new and will need some time to mature.
Nis already has over 200,000 passengers by the end of July.
DeleteRyan routes in ZAG are not new. ZAG has been protecting OU for many years and still has less ULCCs than BEG. When will ZAG allow Easy and Wizz, both operating at BEG for years?
DeleteCro government has been protecting and financing OU more than any other government. They are ready to provide any subsidies to prevent OU from going bankrupt
What protectionism in BEG? There is literally only protectionism in places where there is a rigid ASA in place: Russia, Turkey and Egypt.
DeleteWizz Air is not damaged in Belgrade, they are forced to compete on equal terms like the rest of the airlines. Even with that they first boosted BEG from A320 to A321 and then in December they launched a whole bunch of new routes with A321. So please stop writing utter nonsense.
On top of that, Eurowings launched two routes and both are already operated by JU. Is that also part of protectionism? You can not have a strong airport without a strong local carrier, that's obvious by now. That is why Air Serbia is fueling all this growth and bringing in new transfer passengers. That is why BEG was last month at 97% of its pre-covid numbers for that month.
June 2022
DeleteBEG: 542.000
ZAG: 292.761
+185% for BEG
July:
BEG: 712.500
ZAG: 329.203
+216% for BEG
Now that covid is gone and there are no more restrictions, BEG has managed to have more than double the passengers handled in July. I expect the same in August. This year it might not be double as there were still some covid restrictions in H1.
Air Serbia is today sending A319 to LJU from BEG.
ReplyDeleteBEG-LJU 105 pax
DeleteLJU-BEG 100 pax
So not for operational reasons which is great.
They will likely have 3 daily flights on ATR to LJU in the future
DeleteThey used to have it before, 17 weekly from BEG and 2 weekly from INI. JU was Slovenia's number one airline in terms of frequencies.
DeleteIt wasn't.
DeleteYes it was, right after Adria and before covid.
DeleteSo 21 weekly flights by LH are less than 19 weekly by AS?
DeleteIt would be interesting to know how many passengers are p2p and how many transfer passengers.
DeleteAnon 16.33
DeleteWhy are you trying to be smart when you are failing at it? That was when JP went bankrupt. JU currently has 11 weekly from BEG and 2 weekly from INI so 13 in total. Everyone besides you know that.
Anon 18:15 ???? You clearly said JU was number one airline for frequencies before corona which is wrong. JU had 19 weekly and LH had 21 weekly. 21 is more than 19. Why are you pissed of?!? Btw currently main airline of cartel has usually 21 flights a week if they don't cancel flights, which is still more than 13 flights before you get angry for no reason.
DeleteLH did not have 21 back then.
DeleteYes it did.
Delete"Lufthansa will operate double daily flights from Frankfurt to the Slovenian capital starting October 27 using the Bombardier CRJ900 jet. Further details can be found here. Services from Munich will launch on November 1 and run daily, also with the 79-seat CRJ900. Additional flight information can be viewed here."
Three daily is 21 flights per week. 3x7=21. Learn how to count.
If Lufthansa didn't have problems it currently has, LJU would probably already have 3x daily to FRA and 2x to MUC.
DeleteYes that's what they planned but those flights were postponed (21 weekly) and they started much later, several months later.
DeleteYup they were by a few months that is flights from Frankfurt
DeleteNo they were not. From the start of late October in 2019 untill the middle of March 2020 LH always had double daily FRA and daily MUC. So they had 21 weekly flights. Stop lying.
DeleteDoesn anybody know, how many passengers from Croatia uses Beograd airport? Is this popular among croatian citizens to also fly from Beograd?
ReplyDelete