Mixed results

Zagreb ends negative trend

The largest Croatian airports have reported their passenger volumes for April of 2009. When compared to last year most airports are reporting negative trends however Croatia’s main airport, Zagreb, has ended its few months of negative decline. Zagreb Airport reported an increase in passenger figures when compared to last April by 2%. There were a total of 168.111 passengers in April 2009 compared to 164.834 in April 2008. The reason for this could be due to Easter as it fell into the month of April instead of March like last year. Another airport doing well last month was Zadar, which reported an increase in passengers by 64%. The increase which has occurred due to the arrival of Ryanair has seen 14.585 passengers pass through its doors in April. Rijeka also managed to increase passenger numbers by 8%. A total of 7.414 passengers passed through the airport this April compared to 6.848 last year.

Airports continuing to report negative trends are Split, Dubrovnik, Pula and Osijek. The worst affected this April, due to its low volume of passengers, was Osijek. The airport saw only 137 passengers compared to 887 last year, a decrease of 85%. Also performing badly was Pula whose passenger numbers decreased by 51% to 9.381. Dubrovnik saw a decrease of 7% with a total of 68.907 passengers this April. Split performed the best out of the worst with a decrease of only 1%. It had 54.878 passengers this April compared to 55.440 during the same month last year.

The number of passengers transiting through Croatian airports were recorded in Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, Pula, Zadar and Rijeka. Zagreb saw the largest decrease of transiting passengers in April with figures falling by 53% compared to last year, meaning more people are choosing not to travel on from Zagreb. In contrast Dubrovnik, Pula and Rijeka saw an improvement with more transiting passengers.

The results, like all during this year, have been largely affected by the global financial crisis.