Company insight Return to the skies
Despite a difficult past 18 months for the aviation industry, the award-winning Zagreb International Airport continues its strong recovery with new aircraft and an expansion of its routes for the winter season. Future Airport speaks to Hüseyin Bahadir Bedir, the airport’s CEO, about overcoming this challenging period.
The Covid-19 pandemic hit the aviation industry hard. What is the basis of Zagreb Airport’s strategy for overcoming the crisis? Hüseyin Bahadir Bedir: From the very beginning, before we had a clear picture of how deep the pandemic would have an impact on our business, we made changes in investment planning and cost optimisation. Given the significant decline in revenues, we met the conditions for using the package of measures to help the economy approved by the government of the Republic of Croatia to preserve jobs, and we have secured additional loans for maintaining financial liquidity, continuity of operations and high safety and operational standards. We are collaborating with our partner airlines as much as we can to re-establish the flights despite the low demand. Moreover, we have published a new and aggressive incentive model by the beginning of 2021 to encourage airlines to operate to and from untapped markets. This incentive model has led Ryanair to open a new base at Zagreb in summer 2021 with two aircraft, while the third unit is planned to be in use by December 2021. With three aircraft based in Zagreb, Ryanair will operate 24 new routes with over 60 departing flights per week in winter 2021–22, to and from 16 European countries.
When do you expect traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels? After several months of decline and stagnation of traffic caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Zagreb Airport recorded a gradual traffic recovery in summer 2021 with a significant increase in the number of passengers, an increase in the number of destinations, the opening of new routes and an increase in weekly frequencies on existing routes compared with 2020. That trend continues in the winter 2021–22 timetable.
From December 2021, Zagreb will be connected with 50 destinations in the
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New destinations and improved connections with Europe and the Middle East will help Zagreb International Airport to increase its passenger numbers and eventually surpass pre-pandemic levels.
winter timetable. A total of 19 airlines will connect Zagreb with five destinations for domestic traffic, and 45 destinations in 28 countries for international traffic. We believe that such good connections with Europe and the Middle East will contribute to a significant increase in the number of passengers at Zagreb Airport and that we will exceed pre-pandemic levels by 2023.
Despite all the challenges of the pandemic, Zagreb Airport was declared the best airport in Europe in the category of two to five million passengers last year. What was crucial to earning that award? Despite challenging times reflected in a significant reduction in passenger numbers and operations, passengers and users of Zagreb Airport awarded the airport with high marks for the third year in a row, through regular research for the level of service quality by Airports Council International (ACI) as part of its Airport Service Quality (ASQ) programme. The ASQ runs a global programme to assess passenger satisfaction with airport services through 37 key performance
indicators. The field programme is conducted throughout the year by ASQ certification agents, interviewing passengers at airports through a single ACI/ASQ query. According to this relevant research, Zagreb Airport was named the best airport in Europe in the category of airports with two to five million passengers per year in 2018, 2019 and 2020. What makes us proud is the fact that our efforts in 2020 ensured the best possible service in these demanding circumstances, with special consideration of the health of our employees, passengers and other stakeholders. In 2020, Zagreb Airport was among the first European airports to successfully pass the accreditation programme for the establishment of health security measures in the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic. After reviewing the evidence presented through the evaluation process in October this year, Zagreb Airport has shown that it provides a safe airport experience for all travellers and earned ACI’s Airport Health Accreditation for the next 12 months. ●
www.zagreb-airport.hr Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
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