Low cost carrier Eurowings, part of the Lufthansa group, plans to transport approximately 900,000 passengers to and from Croatia in 2017, which is 55 percent more than last year, making Croatia one of the countries with the highest growth rate, Eurowings’ network development manager Ivan Oreč said in a Fenix-Magazin.de report from April 10 2017.
Noting that Eurowings is the only foreign airline that flies to all Croatian airports, Oreč added that 11 new routes to Croatia have been opened this year, connecting Dubrovnik, Pula, Zadar, Split, Osijek and Rijeka with Salzburg, Vienna , Munich, Dueseldorf, Stuttgart and Hanover. Together with their existing Zagreb service, this represents a significant increase in their operations in Croatia.
“Last year, most of our passengers flew to Spain, UK, Italy, Switzerland and Austria, and Croatia is among the top 10 countries, as a traditionally important market and a market with one of highest growth rates, as you can tell from our 55% increase plan for 2017,” Oreč added.
The company has high expectations from their 11 new routes, especially when it comes to the new winter Split service, aimed at making the tourist season last longer.
Split and Zagreb are the cities connected with most Eurowings services, so their airplanes will fly to the new Franjo Tudjman Airport as well. Oreč says that the Zagreb airport has significantly higher charges than other major cities in Europe, which is not stimulating for ‘low cost’ companies.
“We have had high growth rates in Croatia in recent years, which will continue in the future, and we are planning to continue our cooperation with the Croatian Tourist Board in joint advertising, which we are satisfied with, as well as cooperation with other Croatian airports. However, charges at certain Croatian airports are still quite high, so we are very cautious when it comes to further investments. On the other hand, we expect the support of the Ministry of Tourism and the local communities in order to continue to grow at the same pace in the coming years,” Oreč said.
Eurowings transported a total of 18.4 million passengers last year, while this year the plan is to transport about 23 million, representing a 25 percent increase.
Eurowings fleet currently consists of 109 Airbus aircraft and they are, as Oreč pointed out, the third ‘low cost’ company in Europe, with the desire to climb up on the list. New jobs are being opened constantly because, directly and indirectly, around a thousand positions open for every million passengers transported.
