Zagreb Airport was linked to a record seven cities in Spain last year with a combined total of 238.715 passengers travelling between the Croatian capital and the Mediterranean country. The growth in connectivity between the two was driven almost entirely by Ryanair, which operates five of the seven routes, with three of them added last year alone - Palma de Mallorca, Girona and Alicante. Malaga remains the most popular destination, followed by Madrid, which is maintained seasonally by Iberia. Croatia Airlines is the smallest of the three carriers operating between the two markets, maintaining seasonal operations to Barcelona, which have been challenged by Ryanair’s service to Girona.
Zagreb - Spain passenger performance by route, 2024
Services between Zagreb and Spain will be further expanded this year. Croatia Airlines is adding new seasonal three weekly flights to Madrid from July 1 and increasing frequencies to Barcelona from three to four weekly between July and October. Ryanair is doubling frequencies to Palma de Mallorca this summer from two to four weekly, while Malaga sees an additional weekly service for a total of five rotations. Frequencies between Zagreb and Spain will peak in August with thirty weekly operations. The number of flights will vary over the remaining summer months between 21 and 27 weekly rotations.
This summer season there are a total of 262.332 seats on the market between Zagreb and Spain, representing an increase of 26.5% compared to last year, or an additional 54.926 seats. Ryanair will hold 62% of capacity with 162.204 seats, followed by Iberia with a 20% share and 53.942 seats. Croatia Airlines will have the remaining 18% of capacity with 46.186 seats on the market.
Just goes to show how underserved the market was. Thank you Ryanair. Without you we would still just have seasonal flights to Madrid and Barcelona.
ReplyDeleteThis is a solid boost for tourism in both directions. It’s clear there’s strong demand for Spain, and Zagreb Airport is finally starting to reflect that.
DeleteRyanair is a game changer for any market.
DeleteWell done Croatia Airlines! Smallest of three airlines, smallest number of passengers, flights, capacity and lowest load factor. What has to happen for the incompetent management at this airline to be fired?
ReplyDeleteCareful. Someone will attack you of being 'jealous'.
DeleteRyanair dominates again while Croatia Airlines keeps falling behind. They really need to rethink their network strategy or risk becoming irrelevant.
DeleteWell in their defense they are launching MAD and boosting BCN. At least they are showing some signs of life.
DeleteGood numbers. Nice to see Iberia with high loads too.
ReplyDeleteI would not have guessed that Malaga was busiest
ReplyDeleteExcellent new for Zsgreb.
ReplyDelete*news
DeleteMore Spanish Routes on the future? Sevilla? Tenerife?
ReplyDeleteBilbao could be an option too
DeleteTenerife and/or Las Palmas, Bilbao, Sevilla and Valencia
DeleteTenerife and Las Palmas are unlikely while there is Lanzarote. Bilbao will never happen. Sevilla is too close to Malaga. Valencia is too close to Alicante.
DeleteThere are numerous airports with filghts both from Valencia and Alicante. Even smaller ones
Delete@21.13
DeleteYou have no idea how FR functions. Proximity is not disadvantage but totally opposite. In all cases of Sevilla and Malaga, both are huge and rich markets, and more frequencies to city pairs combined gives more options and opportunities. In case of Canaries one weekly is definitely not enough. So those three are highly likely to happen, and soon. I agree Bilbao has less chances but wouldn't say impossible. And there is another one which might start as well, Ibiza.
Et voilà, here we go. My demand for more Spain Routings ex LJU are more than justified. Not just in Zagreb, but also BEG shows strong demand for Spanish destinations. I personally like it very much to see that there is so much travel between ex YU and Spain. On top of this travel boom, ex YU economy should also strenghten economical ties with Spain. The Balkans in general should focus on even stronger economical ties among their neighbours, but also to mediterrenean or southern European countries such as Turkey, Spain and Portugal. Similar culture and life styles connects us with these nations, we should defenitely make use and benefit from it.
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing, and I repeat NOTHING similar between the lifestyle in Kosovo/Serbia/Slovenia and Spain or Portugal. Turkey and Cyprus maybe yes, but Spain and Portugal 100% no.
DeleteA pity how few you know about the southern european culture and life style
DeleteIt is you who knows nothing if you even think that there is such a thing as "Spanish lifestyle". Someone from Bilbao is completely different to someone from Barcelona and also completely different to someone from Cordoba.
DeleteLifestyle is not that different, but living half Spain half Serbia I can confirm they know absolutely nothing about Balkans, nor they are interested to find out..Most of Spaniards don't even know where we are, in Asia, Europe or elsewhere..They often admit that the eastern border of the world for them is Italy, after Italy they don't know anything..Ok. they know Greece, and they 've heard about Croatia because of tourism...that's it...Serbia, for instance, they don't know that belongs to European continent..
DeleteGermany the same. They dont know nothing about Romania,Bulgaria.
DeleteAnd these are even EU members since many years..
Germans know about Bulgaria and Romania because of all of immigration. Spaniard do not know anything about Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Slovenia. Only Croatia, Albania and Montenegro maybe.
DeleteLot of nonsense from most posters here. Spaniards are well aware of geography, regardless if it's from history, sports or curiosity. There are many similarities between our approach to life. While it is true that there are differences between the Basque and Andalusians, the common denominator is still huge. Laissez-faire approach to life, no rush and hedonism.
DeleteSurprising that the BCN load factor is higher than average for OU
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming it has a higher portion of tour groups.
DeleteAlso it's one of the p2p destinations which tend to have better yields. The average LF is heavily impacted by transfer routes to other exyu and domestic destinations
DeleteOh please. Croatia Airlines flight times are such that barely any transfers are possible.
DeleteBarcelona can Catch connections from SJJ, SKP, TIR, OMO and all domestic destinations.
DeleteWhat are you talking about? The next Croatia Airlines flight from Barcelona to Zagreb is tomorrow. It lands in ZAG at 22:55. There are precisely ZERO flights it can connect onto. Zero.
DeleteThere is also a flight which comes back at 20:25 on other days, leaving most of these depending on the day. Tomorrow you could leave from these cities to BCN and return on another day
DeleteSo basically once a week there is a flight you can connect onto and once a week there is a flight that you can connect from. And that's supposed to be a lot? One flight a week?
DeleteBy the way Split doesn't connect onto Zagreb-Barcelona.
Twice a week
DeleteThanks for the interesting numbers
ReplyDeleteImpressive numbers!
DeleteGreat to see Zagreb expanding its reach to Spain, especially with more leisure destinations like Palma and Alicante added. Ryanair really changed the game here.
ReplyDeleteRyanair may have its flaws, but no one can deny how much they’ve improved connectivity for Zagreb.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteAnd what are the flaws?
DeleteHopefully we’ll see year-round MAD service in the future if demand continues to grow.
ReplyDeleteIberia is already expanding flights into winter from this next November
DeleteBravo Hrvatska!
ReplyDeleteCroatia Airlines at the very bottom, no surprise.
ReplyDeleteAdmin, did Ryanair steal a lot of passengers from Iberia? I imagine people used to go to the Canaries, to Palma, to Malaga/Sevilla and to Barcelona/Zaragoza/Girona via Madrid before.
ReplyDeleteIberia's passenger numbers actually increased 156%. They handled an extra 33.500 passengers. However, they had limited operations in 2023 as the number of flights increased 155%.
DeleteMeanwhile, LJU has single scheduled route to Spain 4 weeks a year.
ReplyDeleteBravo Fraport!
DeleteWould be nice to see similar review of Spain routes from other ExYu airport(s)
ReplyDeleteApart from Belgrade, I don't see the point. Iberia flies one month per year from Ljubljana.
DeleteActually Split and Dubrovnik have flights to Madrid and Barcelona.
DeleteI think Split and Dubrovnik have much more flights to Barcelona and Madrid than Zagreb. In summer only, of course. Correct me if I'm wrong
DeleteBut there are only two routes. There's not much analysis you can do here. And yes, Split for example has way more passengers. Iberia flies twice daily most of the summer
DeleteNice to see that Slovenians travel more to Spain
ReplyDeleteFrau Stapel, lesen Sie das?
ReplyDeleteNaturlich nicht. Sie beschaftigt sich Kaffe trinken mit Jasmin
Delete