More good news for Istria, as London flights for 2016 will start as early as March.
More good news for tourists wanting to visit Croatia’s Istrian peninsula on December 4, 2015, as low-cost carrier Norwegian has announed it will commence its flights from London Gatwick for the new season in March, reports Aerocroatia – a full two months earlier than its inaugural year in 2015.
The weekly flights will start on Sunday, March 27, and they will run until late October, a week longer than this year. The announcement is the latest in extra flights and routes for the Adriatic coast, which looks set for a bumper 2016 tourist season.
While the majority of flights are destined for the Dalmatian coastal airports of Split, Dubrovnik and Zadar, Pula Airport has been quietly diversifying away from its large reliance on Russian tourists, after a new visa requirement which cooincided with Croatia’s accession to the EU in July 2013, slashed the number of Russian arrivals, which had hitherto comprised 40% of the airport’s passenger traffic.
In a Google News interview with me last year, airport director Svemir Radmilo explained to me how he planned to diversify. Since the Russian visa issue, the airport has managed to attract several new airlines from Scandinavia and Western Europe, including easyJet and Aer Lingus, thereby providing a more diverse base of passenger arrivals. The Norwegian timetable is below.
