Lufthansa has cemented its position as Slovenia’s busiest airline, handling 106.874 passengers on its Ljubljana flights during the first three quarters of the year. The German carrier holds a 14.3% market share at Ljubljana Airport, ahead of second placed Turkish Airlines with an 11.7% passenger share. The German airline is also Slovenia’s busiest transfer carrier, accounting for some 30% of all connecting travellers. Together with its equity partners, Swiss and Brussels Airlines, the Lufthansa Group has played a dominant role in the Slovenian aviation sector since the bankruptcy of Adria Airways in 2019. However, passenger numbers on flights to Germany are still notably down on the same period three years ago when Adria was the sole carrier, handling 213.985 passengers, almost double that of Lufthansa. The first quarter of this year was still significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Passenger traffic on scheduled flights at Ljubljana Airport, Q1 - Q3 2022
Many airlines operating into Ljubljana today were not present during the first three quarters of 2019. Among those that were, Air France has seen the strongest come-back. In June, the airline introduced a second daily flight to the Slovenian capital, exceeding its pre-Covid capacity levels. Jointly with Transavia France, which commenced seasonal summer operations from Orly Airport to Ljubljana in late April, passenger numbers between the two capital cities have reached 93.2% of pre-pandemic levels. Air Serbia managed to reach 81.6% of its pre-Covid traffic on the Slovenian market, while Turkish Airlines achieved 74.9% of its pre-pandemic passenger levels.
Charter flights to holiday hotspots are becoming an important source for traffic at Ljubljana Airport as it continues its recovery from both Adria’s demise and Covid. During the first three quarters of the year, 30.8% of all passengers using Ljubljana Airport flew on charters. This is up from 18.6% over the same period in 2019. In the first three quarters of this year, a total of 231.014 travellers flew on charters with the bulk being handled in June, July and August. The share of passengers flying on charters is expected to come down during the winter, however, the airport will still boast a notable number of leisure flights including those to Hurghada, Antalya, Bilbao, Vitoria, Malta, Madeira, the Azores, Lapland and Albania.
Passenger traffic on charter flights at Ljubljana Airport, Q1 - Q3 2022
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What a surprise
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt about it. Slovenian tax payer have given a lot of money to Lufthansa to fly to and from Ljubljana. Otherwise it would be something else
DeleteAir France is doing really well in Ljubljana. I think people are looking for alternatives to Lufthansa whose service levels have really reached rock bottom. Air France also has great fares and promo sales from time to time.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteIs Air France service better?
DeleteYes
Delete+1
DeleteLufthansa is compareable to WizzAir and EasyJet. Their service keeps getting worse and worse.
Plus their crew are quite cold and unwelcoming despite being extremely professional.
DeleteLufthansa's Economy is truly awful on TATL flights, I avoid them at all costs. Horrible seat pitch - impossible to even minimally open a laptop - and the food is just beyond embarrassing. United (which is usually comparable pricing) is way better and often has reasonably priced Premium Economy.
DeleteI would have expected Turkish Airlines to have reached more than 81% of pre Covid.
ReplyDeleteYou mixed up Air Serbia's numbers with Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines is 74.9%.
DeleteSorry indeed. Definitely expected their numbers to be above 75%.
DeleteInstead of having 14 flights, they're operating 10 weekly. With monthly cancellations. 75% is a great number.
DeleteInteresting that they are cancelling flights. Is it due to lack of staff, demand? I know they had a lot of challenges this summer with staffing and capacity.
DeleteLack of equipment and some shortage of staff. Demand is more than supply.
Delete30% passengers on charters is huge. The number will fall in last quarter but it is still a considerable number of passengers.
ReplyDeleteCharter hub :D
DeleteHow many flights does Lufthansa operate to Ljubljana now? Have they started using Airbuses?
ReplyDelete21x weekly with CRJs
DeleteIt would be interesting to compare LH's numbers with Adria's on flights to Frankfurt and Munich.
ReplyDeleteIt is written in the article
DeleteJP - 213,985
LH - 106,874
Yes but that is Adria's number for entire German market. I can't remember if they flew any other German destination in 2019 other than Frankfurt and Munich.
DeleteNo but they had several daily flights to FRA and MUC.
Delete14.3% market share : Compared to similar airports, is that a lot or a little?
ReplyDeleteIt's the biggest passenger share Lufthansa has at any ex-Yu airport for sure.
DeleteWhy should LJU feed into the Air Serbia network? With a small ATR? Better to support TK or ME carriers with bigger aircraft to support eastern routes.
DeleteI am actually proud of Air Serbia for doing so well in Slovenia. Hopefully in summer 2023 they bring back those noon departures to LJU so as to further consolidate their position in Slovenia.
ReplyDeleteIt actually makes me wonder if night flights to LJU could work. Leave Belgrade at 00.30 with the return flights landing at BEG at around 05.30. It could make sense with more and more morning departures to the east being added (Moscow, Larnaca, Istanbul, Podgorica, Tivat...). In addition to those they could feed their growing long-haul network.
Now it's not the time for JU to slow down in Slovenia. They need to keep pressure on the market so as to fight off competition. Luckily for them, other airlines are not rushing to add flights to LJU.
Let's see if by the end of the year Serbia can overtake Belgium as the 5th largest market from Slovenia. Now that would be an achievement.
As for LH Group's numbers being considerably lower than those of JP, it should not surprise anyone. Adria was barely making any money on these flights and it is only now that we are seeing what is the commercially justified potential of the Slovenia-DACH market.
I agree that Air Serbia has done rather well. 81% of pre Covid numbers is pretty solid considering the travel restrictions in Q1.
DeleteLJU doesn't allow night time scheduled flights due to noise concerns.
Delete+1
DeleteHmm didn't know that. When are they open? Or actually between what times are they closed?
DeleteThen I guess JU has no other choice but to add noon flights. Then again, this summer they did boost capacity to LJU due to strong demand so maybe we get to see the A319 in the future.
LJU doesn't allow night time scheduled flights due to noise concerns.
DeleteEither your comment is a lie or they are not sticking to it on daily basisi
We had refueling flights from Iran air a few years ago departing at 2am, 757 of DHL lands at 3 am on monday, and many charter flights are operating at night
So there seems to be no limitations
there is limit, but in form of fee, which goes up considerably when service is provided outside working hours. I doubt the benefit of landing and taking off outside business hours would be considerable enough to outweigh the extra cost.
DeleteI suppose flights can depart normally from 06.00, that would be too late for JU. Even 05.00 wouldn't work on the ATR as it would arrive at 06.20 thus missing most of the morning connections. BEG's minimum connecting time is 40 minutes so any departure before 07.00 would be off the table.
DeleteLooking at today's departures, connections to CPH, TIV, BCN, HAJ, CDG, STR and ZRH would be missed. On the other hand, flights to FCO, VCE, SVO, VIE and TGD could work. These alone are not enough.
Mind you, the last time when JU operated noon flights to LJU, they had a lot of transfers from Rome. Now with JU adding noon departures to Rome, swift connections to/from LJU will become available once again.
BEG-LJU is doing very well. Tomorrow night one seat left, Monday evening sold out, Friday night a few seats left,
DeleteThey will slowly have to start using a319s
DeleteWhat are the most buisy transfer destanations from LJU with Air Serbia.
DeleteI don't know now, especially since Air Serbia started a lot of new routes and there are no travel restrictions but there was an article here about their 2019 and 2020 busiest transfer routes out of LJU and in 2019 it was: Athens, then Bucharest, Sofia, Skopje, Tirana, Moscow, Thessaloniki, Beirut and New York. In 2020 it was Skopje, Tirana, Athens, Sofia, Bucharest, Podgorica, Sarajevo and Istanbul.
DeleteI flew into TIA last week, same time as JU flight landed. There was a big group of Slovenians, definitely coming from LJU.
DeleteNoise abatement procedures at LJU only dictate the rwy in use for departures. It becomes 12 preferably between 10pm and midnight and 12 exclusively between midnight and 6am. These rules have nothing to do with restricting night traffic. It's the additional airport fees ...
DeleteJU used the 319 on 21th and 22th november to LJU and also use it from time to time
DeleteNo wonder Aegean is starting flights to Ljubljana. Those are good numbers for Greek market on charter flights.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteGreece has more than double the charter traffic than the next country.
I would like to see Eurowings start flights next from the LH group.
ReplyDeleteThey could start Dusseldorf and Hamburg. There seems to be a market for them from/to LJU.
DeleteWasn't Eurowings planning to fly to Ljubljana? I seem to remember something about them and LJU.
DeleteYes, they planned two weekly Dusseldorf-Ljubljana. Then they cancelled that. Then they put Ljubljana on its social media competition for new routes but it was not selected.
DeleteThis was the plan all along when JP was killed off.
ReplyDeleteWith Fraport in charge at LJU, they will be dominating for many many years.
ReplyDeleteWell I hope this is not reason why Fraport is not doing more to attract new airlines. So as not to hurt Lufthansa.
ReplyDeleteWell they brought Aegean, an airline close to Lufthansa :)
DeleteTransavia France and Flydubai also launched flights, none of them have anything to do with Lufthansa.
DeleteReal shame Austrian has not started flights.
Delete98% of the Vienna passengers were transfers.
DeleteIt was mainly used in the past for Adria to transfer passengers. I doubt there was too much P2P.
DeleteActually there was close to 50% of p2p on VIE. 98% transfers..LOL
DeleteThe UK market has really tumbled.
ReplyDeletePity
DeleteThe UK market has tumbled everywhere in Europe. It isn't just our region.
DeleteExpected
ReplyDeleteAny chance we might see LH send A321s to LJU next summer?
ReplyDeleteFirst, it would be fine to get A320 double daily in summer, and then we can potentialy start thinking about A321, A321NEO, A330, B748, ....
Deletethere was 320 double daily almost every day from JUN to SEP and few times even 321
DeleteFlydubai seems to be performing really well
ReplyDeleteWould be interesting to compare to the performance on their ZAG route.
DeleteCan anyone calculate their average load factor from the number of passengers?
Delete2022 LF data Q1-Q3:
DeleteDXB-LJU:
Average: 60.07%
Min. month: 43.2% in May
Max. month 81.7% in March
LJU-DXB:
Average: 55.80%
Min. month: 30.9% in May
Max. month: 78.16% in February
Not the best result for such a long flight. I guess yields are doing relatively ok, probably their business class is selling quite well.
DeleteGlad to see they are doing well in LJU.
ReplyDeletelol
DeleteAre there any new destinations LH group could add to Ljubljana?
ReplyDeleteBerlin!
DeleteHamburg too
DeleteI find it very interesting that Eurowings has done nothing in LJU.
ReplyDeleteGreece with almost 50.000 charter pax could definitely support a scheduled flight to LJU.
ReplyDeleteProbably A3 could launch a 3 weekly A320 service.
Just my2cents
They are next summer
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2022/09/aegean-airlines-to-launch-ljubljana-and.html
Would love to see Air Dolomiti launch a few routes to LJU
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly can they offer?
DeleteRip off prices
DeleteInteresting numbers.
ReplyDeleteLufthansa rules the Slovenian market
ReplyDeleteIt always has, through Adria in the past.
DeleteCharter to cold winter Lapland (for Santa)?
ReplyDeleteHow many flights are planned?
I guess just one or two. Am I right?
Yes, I believe it is just 1.
DeleteHow many charters to Bilbao or Albania? I can't see many.
ReplyDeleteI think even during the summer there was a charter to the Albanian coast. Not sure who is going there in winter though.
DeleteI keep reading about these charters to Albania but there was not a single one operated in the summer, less so in winter.
DeleteThere was. And there are charters planned for this winter season.
DeleteThere wasn't though
DeleteYes there was.
DeleteWhich airline
DeleteRecords show there were no charters between Ljubljana and Albania so far this year. According to Fraport Slovenija, there will be this winter season.
DeleteThank you
Delete42,4 % less traffic compared to October18. Well done Fraport & Slo government!
ReplyDeleteYou do not understand that it is cheaper to fly Pristina and Tirana directly instead of transfers via Ljubljana?
DeleteFrom all of this data, I can conclude that Trade Air is making some good money in Ljubljana.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteCould have been a Slovenian carrier...
DeleteThings are definitely improving
ReplyDeleteToo slowly. Many opportunities have been missed while the rest of Europe has moved on.
DeleteIs there any chance KLM will start flights in addition to Transavia? Like we have on the Paris route?
ReplyDeleteNot at the moment, no. Amsterdam airport is/was a mess so Transavia cancelled flights to LJU because of this.. At KLM there are more interesting routes where money can be made. Unfortunately, LJU has become a third world airport connectivity wise.
DeleteLoads are quite good all things considered
ReplyDeleteWhile numbers are headed in the right direction, flights to Iberian peninsula and northern Europe are still missing. Hope this will change too.
DeleteI wonder if these airlines carried mostly transfers or point to point passengers.
ReplyDeleteLH is full of both.
DeleteI expected LOT to have somewhat better numbers.
ReplyDeleteA mix of E170/75 and sometimes E190
Deletethey used 737 MAX today. load factor was 40% to LJU and 98% from LJU
Delete