B&H minimises operations

Many flights cancelled

Since Tuesday, B&H Airlines has operated only one return flight to Istanbul, cancelling its services to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Banja Luka and Zurich, which were scheduled to operate over the past two days. It follows B&H’s decision to cut down on flights until the start of the summer season. Despite several attempts to contact B&H Airlines, there has been no response from the carrier. Today, the airline is only operating its morning service to Istanbul cancelling its other two flights for the day - one to Amsterdam and the other being the afternoon service to Istanbul. The return flight on the morning Istanbul service has also been cancelled.

B&H Airlines’ network wide cuts were scheduled to begin in March. As it stands now, over the next month all flights to Amsterdam and Copenhagen will be cancelled. Services to Zurich will operate only once per week while many flights to Istanbul, the carrier’s signature route, will also see cancelations. In November 2011 the airline similarly suspended flights to Amsterdam and Copenhagen for a month. In December it launched services from Banja Luka to the Danish capital, however, they were suspended after only four flights.

In late 2011, the CEO of B&H Airlines, Altan Buyukyilmaz, said the carrier was looking to stretch its wings in 2012 and open new routes. However, as of Monday the airline’s planned new flights to Vienna, Skopje and Dusseldorf have been removed from global reservation systems while ticket sales have been blocked since early February. Meanwhile, the government of the Bosnian Federation approved a 1.3 million Euro cash injection for B&H Airlines yesterday. The bulk of the money will go to covering airport fees, purchasing jet fuel and to Euroctonrol.