Low cost carrier Ryanair has performed strongly from its base in Zagreb in 2022, with London Stansted being its busiest route with just over 100.000 passengers handled between the two airports. According to data provided by the European Statistical Office, the budget carrier handled over 816.500 passengers on 23 out of 27 routes from the Croatian capital last year. These figures do not include Dublin and Rome where Ryanair directly competes against Croatia Airlines, as well as the seasonal flights to Brindisi and Corfu, which were launched last summer. During 2022, Ryanair faced operational difficulties, resulting in a significant reduction of its planned operations on a number of routes. This led to the temporary suspension of several services including those from Zagreb to Hahn, Sandefjord, Weeze, Sofia and Basel, which is reflected in the figures.
Ryanair's performance on 23 out of 27 Zagreb routes in 2022
The airline performed strongly on a number of leisure-oriented routes, particularly Malta, Paphos in Cyprus and Malaga. The carrier previously said that “Ryanair will change travel habits in Zagreb and encourage locals to travel more by air”, noting that popular year-round holiday destinations would generate greater demand for outbound flights from the Croatian capital. This year the airline is maintaining services out of Zagreb without disruption and is growing frequencies to Basel, Charleroi, Corfu, Dublin, Malta, Malmo, Sandefjord and Sofia over the summer. It will launch new seasonal operations to Kos on June 2, but will tomorrow perform its final flight to Dortmund, which will be discontinued thereafter.
Ryanair previously said it was satisfied with its operations out of Zagreb. Last year it noted, “Currently, we are really satisfied with the majority of the markets served out of Zagreb. For example, the UK market performs really well, as well as Ireland with the Dublin route. Then we see German markets, Swedish markets … so we are very happy with current demand. There are some tourist destinations in the future that are of interest to us too. We really believe that Zagreb can be attractive all-year round, not just for families and the diaspora, but for tourists as well, so we want to use all these opportunities in the future”.
OU made a big mistake selling 5 of it's Heathrow slots.
ReplyDeleteIt was bound to come back to bite them one day.
DeleteRyanair is probably now the busiest airline in Croatia. What is more impressive is that they can beat Croatia Airlines even though Croatia Airlines has a portion of its passengers counted twice because of transfers.
ReplyDeleteIt might have even been busier than Croatia Airlines in Zagreb. OU had just 1.4 million passengers in total last year, and remember they had a busy schedule from Split. That's really disastrous for OU.
DeleteAny idea how many passengers there were on the ZAG-LHR-ZAG route? Wonder if Ryanair managed to beat Croatia Airlines and British Airways
ReplyDeleteThere were 108.515 passengers on the London Heathrow route.
DeleteZAG-LHR-ZAG had 108.463 passengers during 2022.
DeleteLondon is definitely the busiest gasto route in the region.
DeleteSo one FR had almost the same number of passengers as OU and BA combined to Heathrow. Amazing.
DeleteOU is limited by slots and BA cut many flights. People had no other choice but to fly on crappy FR.
DeleteLondon is a gasto route?…
DeleteOf course it is! Croats who moved there are mostly doing poorly paid jobs. Same with Germany, Ireland and so on.
Delete@An.12.31
DeleteHahahahahahahaha
Anonymous 12.31 you are wrong there. In London the Croats are all millionaires and live in very expensive properties. There are a lot of medical students in the London hospitals also. The poorer paid Croats tend to love further North in the Midlands or Manchester area. Every Croat I know in London are very wealthy, same as Serbs in London are all mega rich and can afford business class Air fares easily!
DeleteYes that's why OU sold their LHR slots, it was from all that business class demand.
DeleteVery rich and fly with FR
DeleteSurprised there were so many passengers to Malta.
ReplyDeleteSo much for some commentators who say locals don't travel
DeleteA large part of those passengers are from Bosnia. And Belgrade records a significant number of travelers from Bosnia to Malta.
DeleteThese are still very modest numbers and they include Slovenian passengers.
DeleteThe biggest benefit of Ryanair's base and what I'm definitely seeing more and more is people going on short weekend breaks and travelling a lot more. They are starting to change habits which is a good thing.
DeleteYou will see that very soon the announced company in Sarajevo will open flights to Malta
DeleteThen please compare the passenger numbers of comparable cities in Europe. For example Kraków = 8.4 million (2019).
DeleteZagreb still has a lot of catching up to do.
Zagreb is lucky that LJU is incompetent. Remember how when SU launched flights they immediately reduced ZAG, same with AF and FZ.
DeleteFraport just needs to so a better job.
From Zagreb you can drive to all gastarbajter countries except Ireland and the UK by car. From Krakow you can't. From Zagreb you can drive to the coast for summer tourism in three hours. Not from Krakow. From Zagreb you can drive to all key ski destinations in Italy, Austria and Switzerland in the winter. Not from Krakow.
DeleteNo it's the albanians who use 70% of Zagrebs destinations.... thank them for the high number ;)
DeleteWell you can drive from Zagreb to Sofia or Memmingen yet there are still flights. Also you can drive from Krakow to Budapest but there are still flights. So what gives my good Anon friend.
DeleteCroatia is huge here in Malta. Apart from many people from Bosnia using this route, huge number (well for Malta) of locals are using it.
DeleteAnonymous 09:37: that's what it's all about in comparison. Who uses the car and bus more to travel and who flies more. 15 years ago, the majority of Poles came to Croatia by car, now by plane.
DeleteAs I wrote, Kraków is just one example of many comparable continental cities. Zagreb is about 50th in Europe in terms of population. The number of passengers at the airport isn't even in the top 100. And the topic was traveling by plane, wasn't it?
DeleteInteresting, thank you.
DeleteZagreb is absolutely not the 50th city in Europe by population.
DeleteIt is 23th by population in EU
DeleteNot in the top 50 in Europe overall though. Hovering at #60 more or less.
DeleteAnonymous09:03 I'm not surprised with Mata numbers, but I am with Malaga ones. In my opinion Spain is so unserved market from Croatia.
DeleteCroatia Airlines had 30 years to launch leisure routes. Didn't cross their mind.
ReplyDeleteWell in their defense Malta did not have a commercial airport back then.
DeleteOU did fly to Matla in the past
DeleteMalta did not have commercial airport 30, years ago? Are you misinformed, ignorant or stupid?
DeleteI have a Croatia airline magazin from 30 odd years ago which has Malta as a destination 🤷🏽♂️
DeleteBut how did they perform financially in ZAG?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question.
DeleteI guess now we know why Croatia Airlines isn't expanding from Zagreb.
ReplyDeleteThey already have double the route OU has from ZAG
DeleteUsually if an airline isn't responding in face of huge competition it means their finances are stretched to the very limit.
DeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteI dont understand, why the chose DTM to cancel, while other destinations have less pax
ReplyDeleteIt is not always about loads. It has a lot to do with yields.
DeleteThey are also ending Vienna-Dortmund.
DeleteActually Dortmund had higher average ticket prices than most routes. It was the only route that wasn't decreased in frequency at all last year while other routes were being suspended.
DeleteMaybe they are suspending it because Dortmund is increasing fees or something like that.
DeletePlease be mindful of the fact that Wizz also failed on ZAG-DTM. It's a very difficult market because Croats are rich so they can fly on EW from DUS
DeleteRyanair is concentrating its passengers on Weeze.
Delete"It's a very difficult market because Croats are rich so they can fly on EW from DUS"
DeleteThese comments never fail to crack me up 😂 and show that Balkan people have a very low threshold for "richness"
Or maybe you don't get balkan sarcasm
DeleteThis is great but them adding just Kos for 2 months this summer while ending Dortmund is a big disappointment. I expected more.
ReplyDeleteThey needed the capacity to increase frequencies on almost half their network.
DeleteI’d like to see them launching direct flights to PRG and BER
ReplyDelete+1
DeletePodgorica ahead of Manchester!
ReplyDeleteMAN had quite a lot of cancellations last year, while they had the same number of flights as Podgorica.
DeleteTrue, forgot about that.
Deletenot bad at all. Although they were announcing 4th and 5th plane back in 2021 and nothing happened since.
ReplyDeleteThey were announcing up to 10 planes!
DeleteThat was just O'Leary marketing hype.
DeleteRyanair's success is a mirror to Croatia Airlines' failure.
ReplyDeleteCroatia Airlines' only response to Ryanair in these two years was to bring back Barcelona in peak summer and retreat from ZAG. Well done
DeleteWell said! OU couldn't care less and that won't change as long as it continues to have the state behind it no matter what.
DeleteHow many new routes could they launch with an additional aircraft?
ReplyDeleteI would assume 5 new routes.
DeleteMan their LF to Sofia must be bad.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily. Sofia didn't operate for 3 months last year.
DeleteIt is bad. And ticket prices are low.
DeleteBratislava too
DeleteSofia is a disaster. I am surprised they have not canceled this yet
ReplyDeletePlease not! I'm using it regularly.
DeleteLook at the schedule this summer. A nightmare. Don't understand it.
DeleteSome routes just have very poor schedules. Podgorica and Corfu are also impossible to use because of the timings and the days of the week.
DeleteThey are probably getting money to keep it or they are forced to by the contract they have with the airport.
DeleteSo I guess if the we include the additional 4 destinations they had around a million passengers from ZAG last year. Not bad at all.
ReplyDelete*if we
DeleteYes that's a great result with just 3 based planes.
DeleteI really hope that FR considers domestic flights. It'll be very beneficial for Croatia.
ReplyDeleteThey had the opportunity to apply at Croatian PSO tender but they chose not to.
DeleteThey explained last year that it didn't make financial sense for them.
DeleteThank you. Good to see how their routes are performing on an individual basis.
ReplyDeleteRyanair's good performance is great news for Zagreb
ReplyDeleteCroatia Airlines needs to get its act together in ZAG and fast.
ReplyDeleteToo late
DeleteOU had lost ZAG. And they are showing no signs of wanting to regain it.
DeleteSoon they are going to have more flights than OU.
ReplyDeleteHow many passengers have Croatia Airlines carried from ZAG?
ReplyDeleteDon't know the exact number from Zagreb but in total they had just 1,453,224 passengers
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/03/croatia-airlines-posts-182-million-loss.html
This includes international flights from Osijek, Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Split and Pula, and also domestic flights like Pula-Zadar, Osijek-Split, and Osijek-Dubrovnik. Not all of that is Zagreb only.
DeleteI find it odd that Zagreb has just one new route announced for next year.
ReplyDeleteEven in 2023, you still cannot fly directly from Zagreb to Berlin, Stockholm, Prague, Lisbon, Bucharest, Tirana... and only seasonally to Madrid and Barcelona.
ReplyDeleteKatastrofa
DeleteBukvalno.
DeleteFor an airport in the category of 2 to 5 million passengers, this is not so bad.
ReplyDeleteI believe in the regenerative powers of the aviation market in ZAG.
ReplyDelete94000 Pax, DTM, EIN, NRN and OU dont fly to DUS,
ReplyDeleteDon't forget also the Eurowings numbers to CGN and DUS. The market in that region is huge.
DeleteNumbers kinda match for SOF, there were more than 30,000 Croats who visited Bulgaria in 2022 according to official stats (page 6) and almost 12,000 Slovenes.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nsi.bg/en/content/1969/arrivals-visitors-abroad-bulgaria-months-and-country-origin
Ryanair has a terrible schedule between ZAG and SOF in my opinion. Not encouraging at all.
The schedule makes it impossible to take the flight. Same with the schedule to Corfu. Corfu-Zagreb flies Tuesdays and Thursdays only, and the Tuesday flight is after midnight. It is impossible to do any kind of trip with those dates.
DeleteYes, hopefully this will change in winter. No wonder why the prices are low. For and O&D route, this must change. FR SOF-OTP schedule is also not ideal, but still a bit better.
DeleteWhy so many pax to/from Paphos?
ReplyDeleteAre Croats flying there that much or are foreigners (e.g UK and others) living there flying to Zagreb more?
Slovenian passengers.
DeletePaphos is interesting because it actually has a lot of demand to Zagreb from Cyprus. These flights are heavily used by Cypriots and Slovenes.
DeleteIt's not only Paphos. According to some posters here, literally all flights from Zagreb are almost only and exclusively used by Slovenians. LOL!!! Just don't know then how come Ryanair decided to come to Zagreb and Zadar, and not to Ljubljana and Maribor
DeleteAnd yet pozdrav cannot accept the fact that ZAG is 20 km from Slo border and that most slovenes use it as primary airport ... I flew with Vueling ZAG Barcelona and about HALF of the plane spoke slovene, so much about it ...
Deleteand you generalize your experience on this flight to all leisure flights 🤔
DeleteI'm not a fan of pozdrav iz Rijeke, but on this topic I agree that opinion that Croats don't travel is quite annoying. Of course there are a lot of Slovenes, because it's close, but there also always a lot of Croats flying too when I fly from Zagreb. I see so many of my Facebook friends from Zagreb traveling a lot.
DeleteHow dare you not being my fan? LOL!!! 😃 (joke of course, I am aware some people don't like what and how I write, and I am perfectly fine with it, as long as they communicate in civilized manner, which obviously is the case with you) 😃
DeleteHahaha I'm not a fan, but that doesn't mean that I don't like you. Sometimes I just need slightly more positiveness 😀 and with many comments I agree/have to agree 😁
DeleteHow many flights per week on average does Ryanair have out of Zagreb?
ReplyDeleteIn the summer there are about 9 flights departing per day.
DeleteYes, it would be usefull to have also frequencies on these routes to see yield.
DeleteThey should have upgraded EIN instead of Weeze! I use both options quite often and EIN is always fully packed.
ReplyDeleteWoah, 36K to Karlsruhe and surrounding region! Impressive especially if you want to avoid FRA or flying with LH or both.
ReplyDelete