Croatia Airlines is planning to wet-lease regional aircraft for thinner short routes once it removes the Dash 8 turboprops from its fleet and becomes a single-type operator of the Airbus A220 aircraft. As EX-YU Aviation News learns, through wet-leases the airline intends to overcome overcapacity on routes where the A220s would be too large and is eying a turboprop capacity-provider. By 2027, the carrier will take delivery of twelve A220-300s, which will have the capacity to seat 149 passengers, and three A220-100s with 127 seats. Croatia Airlines will welcome its first A220-300 next month, while the second is expected to arrive in November.
Croatia Airlines’ existing six-member turboprop fleet is under an operational lease. The agreement was concluded in 2007 with GOAL (German Operating Aircraft Leasing), a joint venture between Lufthansa and KGAL, for a period of ten years. GOAL has since sold the units utilised by Croatia Airlines to Falco Regional Aircraft. The lease for the Dash 8s was then extended for two aircraft until late 2024 and for the rest until 2025. The 76-seat Dash fleet has been a workhorse for the airline. Over the past five months, the turboprops operated on a total of 5.903 flights compared to the Airbus jet fleet which was utilised on 3.809 flights.
The Croatian carrier is currently experiencing a fleet shortage with some aircraft out of service due to maintenance and supply chain issues. The airline faced additional issues yesterday when an A319 jet was forced to return to Zagreb shortly after departure to Copenhagen with a technical issue. The airline subsequently wet-leased a Danish Air Transport A320 jet, joining other wet-leases including a Trade Air A320, a Fly41 Airways A319, and an Albastar Boeing 737-800. The airline has also wet-leased ad-hoc capacity on a short-term basis over the past two months and reduced frequencies on select routes until the end of June.
What an odd strategy
ReplyDeleteCunning strategy by Banja Luka doctor Bajic.
DeleteCroatia Airlines is very good at squeezing the s***t out of it's employees and not paying them but paying wet leases and contractors ... No problem. Of course, money flows in both directions
DeleteIt is going to be a very high price of flying new fuel efficient airplanes in order to overcome overcapacity of A220 - a/ You are paying very expensive lease on basic type b/ you need to wet lease spare capacity to save money.... This is going to be studied in economy books in future....
DeleteWho will they be leasing lower capacity planes from? CityJet? Air Nostrum?
ReplyDeleteWay to early for them to have decided yet.
DeleteMost likely some LH group capacity provider.
Delete^Such as?
DeleteMaybe they'll lease ATRs...
DeleteWell, this is purely brilliant!
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it make more sense to extend current leases of Dash 8s?
ReplyDeleteNo, as ATR is much more economical an aircraft.
DeleteProbably not. The Dashes are 16 years old, they will probably soon have to go into expensive maintenance and you would still have to keep crew, and parts for Dash. This way you get rid of it and it is probably less expensive than long term wet leases.
DeleteBut we heard from so called analiticar that wet lease is terribly expensive.
DeleteThey are expensive but the logic here is that its still cheaper to pay 30% premium on block hour of ATR than a normal pricing of A220
DeleteSo it means that the decision to have only A220 in OU fleet was terribly wrong.
DeleteSeems like it
DeleteThey might need to have a long term lease at least for 2 turboprop aircraft, presumably increasing the fleet to 17 aircraft in the end. These 2 would be used purely for domestic routes. ATR72-600 seems as best option atm, Q400 are good but have shown to have issues over past few years with noumber of airlines. 2 ATR72-600 would suit Croatian Airlines as the airline already utilized the shorter cousin, ATR42, 3 of which have been used for noumber of years.
DeleteThey will get ATR wet leases for sure.
ReplyDeleteThink so too
DeleteLH City, CRJs.
Deletethey will not use LH City which is only for Lufthansa itself...
DeleteSo one type operator only on paper.
ReplyDeleteSame as they originally said they would own the A220s but it turned out its all leased.
DeleteBusiness genius Dr Bajic.
DeleteSmart decision. There are very few routes where they need smaller aircraft, like Zagreb-Zadar-Pula, Zagreb-Sarajevo, Zagreb-Vienna in winter timetable, but still sending A220 is not economical.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteVery few routes? 60,78 % operated by Dash says the article. And despite of this OU has in general terrible load factor. So even small 76-seaters fly quite empty.
DeleteEven Copenhagen-Zagreb in winter timetable is operated using Dash. Zagreb-Mostar is another example of such a route. I agree with the other comments here saying that ATRs will be used instead.
DeleteIt makes much more sense. They will probably need around 2-3 wet leases of this kind.
ReplyDeleteNo, it’s opposite. They need 15 wet leases turboprops and 3 x A220
DeleteTrue
DeleteAgree!
DeleteSo similar to what Austrian is doing now with wet leasing ATR72 after they got rid of Dashes. At least Croatia Airlines realized they would need them on time, unlike Austrian which took a couple of years.
ReplyDeleteStupid strategy.
DeleteOS is not actually the company that could be taken as a good example of profitable business.
OS has over 60 aircraft (including 11 widebodies) and over 100 destinations operating out of Vienna. That's a pretty good, not gonna lie
DeleteExcept in last year OS has been making losses and they were the weakiest part of LH group.
DeleteNot the company that should be seen as the successful one.
Air Serbia that comes from smaller and much poorer country has more than 50% of their fleet and 75% of their destinatons.
There is a reason why the Dash 8 is the workhorse for the airline.
ReplyDeleteYet to understand why they are returning Dashes first instead of 25 year old A319s
ReplyDeleteThey have already started returning Airbuses.
DeleteYes they started last year
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/11/croatia-airlines-retires-one-a319-jet.html
That is why their current summer is such a mess.
They'll return 2 Dash 8s this year - so one for each A220 that's planned. They sold all of the Airbus fleet and are now leasing them back, with a plan of 2026 retirement. Dashes will go out first now
DeleteIf croatia is shirt on aircraft there are plenty in California in storage and some quite new, such a the E 175 or E 190, they need to take a page out of Air Serbia and stop sharing money with other carriers and start flying to Canada united states and Australia, like former JAT with the DC10
DeleteGood luck
ReplyDeleteThe thing is they use Dashes across their network. Even to destinations like Brussels. So I really wonder how many turboprops they will we lease.
ReplyDeleteIf they were going for fleet renewal, would it not have been better to have ordered 3-5 regional jets and 5-7 A220s?
ReplyDeleteRemember that they were limited by an agreement they already had with Airbus.
DeleteThe Dash is simply no longer competitive as an aircraft. Hrvatska follows the A220 trend of Air Baltic, Cyprus, Bulgaria, etc. Perfect plane, long range, faster than a turboprop and cheaper maintainance.
ReplyDeleteHave you even read the news? They will be wet leasing turboprops.
DeleteHe just did check headline....
DeleteNuts
ReplyDeleteWouldn't this mean that even before you take delivery of your first new plane you are admitting your future fleet is unsuitable for your needs?
ReplyDeleteExactly.
DeleteThen please stop advertising as a single-type operator
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteIt would not be easy to fill planes on Dash routes which have double the capacity, especially since their current LF is below average. So this makes sense, although ones has to question the financial rationale.
ReplyDeleteAnd for how many years will they wet lease these planes?
ReplyDeleteUntil bankruptcy.
DeleteWhich means not too long....
DeleteIs the new livery reveal today?
ReplyDeleteLiterally the least important thing at OU now is whether the squares will be 2cm larger.
DeleteI thought it was on 18.7?
DeleteNo 18 June
DeleteThe only way to grow your load factor, and therefore reduce the need of Dashes, is by growing your network, increasing transfer passenger share and having more competitive pricing. But this has not occurred to OU management.
ReplyDeleteEx yu airlines competing who will have the biggest wet lease fleet.
ReplyDeleteAir Montenegro is the absolute champion with 50% of its fleet wet leased.
Delete@Anonymous10:53Haha🤣🤣🤣🤣
DeleteLuckily enough their basis was low (1 plane) so the tragedy is little bit lesser....
DeleteYo be honest this nakes more sense then sending A220-300 on routes like Pula-Zadar.
ReplyDelete*makes
DeleteThat goes without saying. The issue here is why did you go for an aircraft that is not suitable for your operations or at least not entirely.
DeleteSo they will likely wet-lease ATRs from BRA, same as Austrian this summer.
ReplyDeleteOr Dash from SkyAlps. They are working on establishing a long term cooperation with LH group.
DeleteOvde se ne zna više ko koga...
ReplyDeleteHahahahhahahha
DeleteThey will need turboprops mostly in the winter, for some thin lines. Wet lease in the winter is extremely unprofessional according to some.
ReplyDeleteSo that is just 5 months....curb season LF will be 57% and it is way to go!
DeleteWell everyone here said that OU should look at JU's business plan.
ReplyDeleteApparently they stole the wrong page out of AirSerbia's playbook.
Albastar boeing ,Trade air ,Fly41 were flying to SKP the past 2 weeks. And when its Croatian then it was their A319 , I just see once the Dash plane.
ReplyDeleteCould it be the ATR 72-600 from their partner SAS? Even though SAS is leaving Star Alliance, they extended their codeshare agreement with Croatia Airlines.
ReplyDelete