Company insight
Recovery and the future in Zagreb
Following the downturn faced by the aviation industry in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, many airports had to adapt to the situation to not only survive, but to thrive. Future Airport International speaks to Hüseyin Bahadir Bedir, CEO of International Airport Zagreb, about his airport’s successes and the future for international travel from Zagreb.
Zagreb Airport celebrated the fifth anniversary of the opening of its new passenger terminal in March this year. Since then, how has this facility helped to transform Zagreb Airport? Hüseyin Bahadir Bedir: The opening of the new passenger terminal marked the beginning of a new era in the operation of Zagreb Airport. After the construction process and successful operational preparations, a new, modern passenger terminal was opened on 28 March 2017 with a total area of 65,000m2
, including 30
check-in counters, 12 new aircraft parking stands and eight air bridges.
Over the past five years, Zagreb Airport has recorded significant growth in all traffic metrics up to 2020. The best traffic results were achieved in 2019, in which more than 3.4 million passengers were recorded. Together with increasing traffic, Zagreb Airport won consecutive quality awards according to passenger surveys, and by hosting many interesting and attractive events, it has profiled itself as a new stage for the city of Zagreb.
Let’s talk about the traffic results in 2021, one of the most difficult years for commercial aviation. How did Zagreb Airport perform? Do you see light at the end of the tunnel? Everyone thought the recovery would be faster in 2021, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Border crossing restrictions continued to have a negative effect on commercial aviation, and we managed to reach only 41% of our passenger traffic in 2019. Zagreb Airport’s traffic recovery strategy was particularly based on a temporary incentive model, which was published at the beginning of 2021 with an attempt to encourage airlines to operate from and to untapped markets. We believe that it was the correct move, as it led Ryanair to launch operations from ZAG in June 2021 and base three aircraft there just six months after their inaugural flight.
This strategy was supported by the generous incentive models offered to existing airlines to accelerate their recovery on existing routes. We can easily say that Zagreb Airport’s recovery gained pace as of September 2021 and resulted
in Zagreb Airport offering the most direct connections in its history during the winter timetable. Zagreb Airport is connected to a total number of 60 destinations with scheduled flights. Twenty-two airlines fly to six destinations in domestic traffic and 54 destinations in international traffic for a total of 30 countries.
Zagreb Airport used to offer a notable selection of long-haul flights before the pandemic. How important were those flights? What are your expectations in 2022 and 2023?
Zagreb Airport has continually expended significant effort to attract some of the most prominent airline partners to connect Zagreb and the region to distant markets such as Canada, South Korea, Qatar and the UAE. Air Transat was the first airline launching non-stop direct flights between Zagreb and Toronto in 2016, initially operating once a week but growing to thrice a week in only two years. This route was also joined by Air Canada Rouge in 2018, which ran the same route with four weekly rotations until the pandemic. In the summer of 2018 and 2019, Zagreb Airport was connected to Toronto with daily flights. The arrival of Emirates in 2017 also had a great importance for Zagreb, Croatia and the wider region. Another important addition to Zagreb Airport’s long-haul network was Korean Air from Seoul to Zagreb in 2018. As for 2022, we have managed to restore a significant portion of pre-pandemic frequencies on Dubai and Doha routes. We are also happy to see Air Transat resuming Zagreb flights this summer. We hope to restore all routes we had before the pandemic by next year and achieve traffic results better than 2019. ●
Zagreb Airport is connected to 60 domestic and international destinations. Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
www.zagreb-airport.hr 23
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