Croatia Airlines will be making minor changes to its network for the 2024/2025 winter season which begins on October 27 and ends on March 29, 2025. While the carrier will maintain the same number of flights and destinations from its hub in Zagreb it will modify a select number of routes from coastal airports. Unlike the previous winter, Croatia Airlines has not scheduled flights between Pula and Zurich for the coming season, which were maintained twice per week. On the other hand, its two weekly rotations between Dubrovnik and Frankfurt are now scheduled to run throughout the entire winter, unlike the previous one when flights were suspended between January 15 and March 1.
At this point, Croatia Airlines plans to operate 9.261 scheduled flights during the slightly longer 2024/25 winter season, representing an increase of 1.4% on the previous winter. It currently has 999.372 seats on sale for the duration of the season. The Croatian carrier anticipates the delivery of its second Airbus A220-300 aircraft by the end of the year. The jet is yet to be incorporated into the airline’s schedule and may result in some changes, both to the network and capacity levels. Croatia Airlines will maintain thirteen international destinations, as well as four domestic services, out of its Zagreb hub.
Departing Zagreb
Departing Split
From Dubrovnik, Croatia Airlines will maintain two routes. In addition to 22 weekly Zagreb flights, it will run a two weekly service to Frankfurt throughout the winter. From Osijek, the carrier will operate two weekly flights to Munich, as was the case the previous winter, while Pula loses its international service to Zurich, with the airline to maintain domestic flights to Zagreb and Zadar. The carrier will run two weekly rotations between Rijeka and Munich, as was the case the previous winter. Zadar will also see a two weekly service to the Bavarian capital, operated until January 13, alongside domestic flights to Pula and Zagreb. As a result, Croatia Airlines will maintain nonstop international flights from six of the country’s commercial airports, including Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Rijeka and Osijek.
Information in the tables above is of an informative nature and subject to change.
They have been copying and pasting their Zagreb timetable for the last 15 years. I would understand if it was turning a profit not to change anything, but it has been loss making.
ReplyDeleteThey simply do t know what to do. The management is clueless, so they stick to copy-pasting. The only change they made is dropping the overnight Zadar/Pula flights.
DeleteNo. OU just like many other state owned companies serve for employment of legible people and not for making profit. They serve their function well, Croats don't care and in return OU provides basic connectivity with no ambition to grow. Jasmin does what he is told to do.
DeleteYep, they know exactly what they are doing. Just doing enough to keep that government money flowing into who knows how many pockets while not raising any EU regulatory eyebrows.
DeleteThey are very conservative with their winter ops.
DeletePrecisely. Don't be naive, they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.
DeleteIf profit were the goal, they could easily achieve it. Almost effortlessly.
Achieving profit however isn't the goal. Rather, what is the goal, is keeping other suspicious profit clean, by slipping it through a third party functionaries' pockets.
Furthermore, as others have pointed out, Croatia Airlines is only one out of plenty of such state-owned companies. Not even a particularly big one.
It's rather just one small cog in the machine, a drop in the ocean. It is in fact so small and insignificant - relatively speaking of course, that it doesn't even appear in the Croatian media who have so much bigger fish to fry.
I can also confirm that even though most Croatians do care about corruption - very much so in fact, OU is probably around the bottom of their list of priorities in that regard. If it's even on their radar, that is.
This is OU. You can't expect any miracles.
ReplyDeleteThey talk about reducing seasonality and then they suspend PUY-ZRH in winter
ReplyDeleteI think this might be a very rational decision. PUY is really not doing well recently so demand is probably not there. Maybe they should add more routes from OSI, DUB or OSL could work.
DeleteWhen was Zurich launched as a route from Pula? Sometimes airports give 1 year incentive to operate route year round. Might be that or give heavy winter discounts for a year
DeleteThey ran the route for two consecutive half-winters. The route operated November-January for two years. And flights barely had any passengers ever. But prices were above 150 euros each time.
DeleteInteresting. Thanks
DeleteI tried to use the flight once to connect onto a SWISS flight from Zurich and the price came out as 400 euros. So I flew from Trieste for 30 euros with Ryanair instead.
DeleteBravo OU!
ReplyDeleteOn what?
DeleteNice picture of personnel
DeleteBravo Hrvatska! ❤️
DeleteWhy is Zadar-Munich jist until mid-January? Is there really more demand in Novembet than January and February?
ReplyDeleteMost likely
DeleteIt's just the Croatia Airlines way of thinking. It's the same stupid reason why "summer seasonal" starts in mid May.
DeleteCopy, paste, implement, record losses, nag to the government, get money, copy, paste, implement...
ReplyDeleteLike that for years and years.
Unfortunately absolutely true
DeleteThe Airbuses are completely unsuitable for their winter ops. Too large for 98% of the routes.
DeleteStill below pre covid levels. Fifth year...
ReplyDeleteAt lest no cuts, except PUY-ZRH
ReplyDeleteHoping they add more frequencies once the second A220 arrives.
ReplyDeleteWon't one of the Airbuses leave then?
DeleteWhy? Croatia is so highly seasonal
DeleteRyainair tends to disagree, have you checked their winter ZAG schedule?
DeleteZagreb is not so seasonal but the Croatian coast is extremely seasonal.
DeleteOf course the coast is but Croatia Airlines is the national carrier of whole Croatia, I believe...
Delete13 international routes and 17 in total is way too low. I think FR has more routes.
ReplyDeleteRyanair has more routes than Croatia Airlines in DUBROVNIK during the winter, let alone in Zagreb.
DeleteAny comparison between Ryan and Croatia is beyond dumb.
Delete...and yet when one looks at a departure board thats exactly what one has to do. Because OU ain't there
DeleteLH hubs dominating the schedule.
ReplyDeleteAs per usual
DeleteMinken Vrankvurt, Vrankvurt Minken
DeleteI'm surprised FCO is daily from Split. Route must be doing well
ReplyDeleteWould be interesting to see the breakdown of passengers. Since flight originates in ZAG, is it mostly ZAG passengers or SPU.
DeleteWhy would anyone fly with OU when FR flies nonstop?
DeleteI'm wondering that too
DeleteMaybe it's a repositioning flight the same way JU sells BEG-INI?
DeleteNo, not repositioning flight
DeleteMaybe they could have gone with 5 weekly via Split a 2 weekly nonstop. At least give it a try.
DeleteIf they haven't changed this now that Ryanair offers nonstop flight to Rome, they never will.
DeleteThe passengers mostly go from Split to Rome, not from Zagreb. Croatia Airlines sells it as Zagreb-Split-Rome because that is how it feeds it a few more passengers and that is how it gets the aircraft into Split to begin with.
DeleteI flew ZAG-SP-FCO in June on Aitbus 319. Four of us booked ticket a week in advance. The lowest fare for the return flight was 160 EUR. It was a bit more expensive than Ryanair at time of booking, but schedule suited us better. In my opinion it is not too inconvinient to have a stop in SPU. It is les than 30 minutes. Aircraft was full of SPU bound pasangers and then in SPU there were about 50 passangers for FCO. Return was FCO-DBV-ZAG.
DeleteThey should operate ZAG-FCO-SPU-FCO-ZAG
DeleteThat would take too long and wouldn't deliver any benefit.
DeleteIn my opinion Croatia Airlines' biggest issue are their high fares.
ReplyDeleteAnd the fact they barely fly anywhere. Whenever I try to use them, another airline is cheaper/has better timings/flies directly. Even when you fly to Croatia on a connecting flight, Lufthansa is cheaper than Croatia Airlines for the final Frankfurt-Zagreb sector.
DeleteIstanbul missing big time
ReplyDeleteThey said how they may extend IST into winter from Split. So much for that.
DeleteThey said they will look into it for the future. So it wasn't likely to happen this winter anyway.
DeleteThe Danube River marks the end of the known world—anything beyond that is uncharted territory.
DeleteSo none of the new seasonal routes they introduced this summer from Zagreb are operating in winter :(
ReplyDeleteTirana has actually been reduced to 1 weekly in October.
DeleteZAG-TIA never made sense. Very few flights actually offered connections.
DeleteWonder who were the passengers on this flight. Albanians from Croatia? Local Croats going on holiday? I remember they delayed the launch of this route and cut frequencies to 1 weekly for first month as well.
DeleteCroatian ministers and MPs recently flew Zagreb-Belgrade-Tirana to get to Belgrade. Croatia Airlines just doesn't fly at good times or often enough to attract passengers.
DeleteI wish OU all the best and I ain't hating but those uniforms look horrid, especially the UK policeman hat.
ReplyDeleteI like the new scarfs and the male jumpers but I don't like the hats and the female one piece dress.
DeleteIsn't the scarf the same as it has always been?
DeleteThey should really take some more risk and extend more of their seasonal flights from Zagreb to year round.
ReplyDeleteRisk is the last thing they can afford at the moment.
DeleteLooking at the upside at least they are not shrinking this winter.
ReplyDeleteRelative to the market, they are definitely shrinking. Zagreb Airport is seeing double-digit growth this year. But given that Croatia Airlines has such a bad load factor, it can probably achieve double-digit growth without any increase in flights at all.
DeleteGroundbreaking
ReplyDeleteLet's hope next summer brings some real changes
ReplyDeleteWe can only hope
DeleteWhat about Madrid, Barcelona?
ReplyDeleteBarcelona is seasonal. Not sure if OU ever flew Madrid
DeleteLast winter I said how interesting it would be to compare the network with this winter... i can't believe nothing has changed
ReplyDeleteNever anything new or out of the box for OU.
DeleteVery underwhelming
ReplyDeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteWill the 2nd A220 be delayed?
ReplyDeleteNo news recently
It is not being delayed. Plane is in production and will arrive by the end of the year.
DeleteLHR 3-4x per week???
ReplyDeleteThey sold their slots a few years ago
DeleteOU made a profit that year
DeleteYes, by selling off its asset and was back to losses the following year.
DeleteHow can I buy this male's flight attendant jumper ? The design is so modern !
ReplyDeleteWhen you have management, whose only experience is - running local bus lines for the working class....
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteSo many conspiracies about being a feeder..
ReplyDeleteYes, the discrepancy between frequencies to Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich and Vienna compared to the rest of the network, not much of which is left, really shows what a conspiracy it is...
DeleteI also used to wonder why OU doesn’t fly direct ZAG-FCO flights, but then it made sense to me once I saw some old JAT route networks. These also had no direct ZAG-FCO flights but flights were all via SPU/DBV. So, if you are saying they’re copying and pasting as OU, it’s actually copying/pasting from the 80s.
ReplyDeleteEven crazier
DeleteShame ATH remains seasonal while Aegean upgraded ATH-ZAG to year round.
ReplyDeleteWhy shame?
DeleteBecause it means they can't make it work in winter while other airlines can.
DeleteNice.
ReplyDeleteOMG is that all there is?
ReplyDeleteYes, unfortunately
DeleteShame on OU, look at DBV! Luckily, there are foreign carriers and Ryanair.
ReplyDeleteSome years ago they actually had a very good network from DBV with numerous European destinations. Instead of using the opportunity to benefit from Dubrovnik Airline bankruptcy they just let other airlines take over and withdrew.
DeleteUntil recently they used to at least fly Dublin and Barcelona from Zagreb until January. Now not even that
ReplyDeleteCroatia Airlines is limited in what it can do. The winter schedule would benefit from OU being more of a transfer airline, so they could fly to certain destinations purely to transfer people to third destinations. But in summer they have sufficient demand for point to point flights and do not have the capacity to do large scale international transfers.
ReplyDeleteThis is why businesses need to be developed. Even China has moved on from the business mentality of Croatian government run companies. Croatian connected management has more in common with North Korea than the EU.
DeleteNot great but not a disaster either. Keeping the status quo.
ReplyDelete