Zagreb Airport – past and present

Annual traffic

Zagreb airport is Croatia’s busiest airport and last year passed through the two million passenger mark for the first time. Promoting itself as “Gateway to Southeast Europe” the airport recorded double-digit growth for a fourth successive year resulting in a passenger increase of 50% in just four years. Growth has been remarkably consistent in recent years with traffic only declining in 1999.

The airport’s seasonality profile follows a traditional European city profile with a peak in July. The effect of Easter’s shift into March in 2008 can clearly be seen. The seasonality of other Croatian airports is much more extreme reflecting their role as gateways to coastal resorts.

Airline	Frequency share	Capacity share	Number of routes
Croatia Airlines	59.3%	66.4%	17
Lufthansa	9.7%	7.8%	2 (FRA, MUC)
Germanwings	4.8%	6.3%	3 (CGN, STR, SXF)
Austrian	5.5%	3.5%	1 (VIE)
Turkish Airlines	2.4%	3.4%	1 (IST)
Air France	4.8%	3.1%	1 (CDG)

The national flag carrier Croatia Airlines dominates traffic at the airport and this summer will operate non-stop to 17 destinations giving it two-thirds of all scheduled traffic at the airport. Lufthansa and its partner low-cost airline Germanwings are the next two biggest airlines operating a total of five routes to Germany. Other airlines operating scheduled services this summer include Malev, Wizz Air, Aeroflot, CSA Czech Airlines and TAP Portugal. TAP’s service is to Bologna which then continues on to Lisbon. Wizz Air, the only LCC other than Germanwings with a presence at the airport, operates a single route daily to London Luton.

Analysis of schedule data for this summer reveals that Germany has the most flights and seat capacity. Domestic services are operated by Croatia Airlines to Dubrovnik, Split and Zadar.

Croatia Airlines is present in nearly all of the leading markets except Hungary and Turkey where Malev and Turkish Airlines have a monopoly. Surprisingly there are no flights to either Rome or Milan although regional links continue to grow within the former Yugoslavia. In June Croatia Airlines began 3 weekly regional services to both Priština and Podgorica. Spain is currently unserved though this will change when Croatia Airlines starts flights to Barcelona in June and Iberia launches Madrid services in July. Other new routes starting this summer include Gothenburg (3 times per week with Croatia Airlines) and Tel Aviv (weekly with El Al subsidiary Sun D’Or from April 15). However, routes to Dortmund (with Germanwings), Dusseldorf (with Croatia Airlines) and Geneva (with Baboo) which have started during the last two years appear to have been axed, or in the case of Geneva have ceased at the end of the 2008/09 winter season.