German national airline Lufthansa will operate 11 times a week between Frankfurt and Zagreb this month, reports Croatian Aviation.
Namely, Lufthansa will operate between Zagreb and Frankfurt daily, on certain days, and twice a week. The Munich-Zagreb line is still suspended, and at this moment Lufthansa may only re-establish this line in the summer flight schedule next year.
Although Lufthansa operated twice a day between Frankfurt and Zagreb before the pandemic, the flight schedule was reduced in line with lower demand. However, in the continuation of this month, Lufthansa will work daily to Zagreb, and two flights a day are available on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Aircraft from the A320 family was announced on all flights this month, mainly A319 with a capacity of 138 seats, which is a significant increase compared to CRJ900 aircraft that previously operated on this route that has a capacity of 90 seats.
Croatia Airlines operates three flights a day between Zagreb and Frankfurt, which also has a codeshare contract with Lufthansa on these flights.
For example, Croatian Aviation writes that on November 13, Croatia Airlines has departures from Zagreb to Frankfurt at 06:45, 09:10, and 17:50, while Lufthansa has departures at 06:20 and 15:05. Thus, the difference between the two morning departures is only 25 minutes, meaning some work needs to be put into the flight schedule.
Zagreb has the largest number of seats on a weekly basis to Frankfurt, so a relatively large number of passengers decide to use this line to make connections to their final destinations in Europe and the world via Frankfurt, mainly on Lufthansa flights but also other partners from the Star Alliance Group that regularly operate to Germany’s largest airport.
Furthermore, Croatian Aviation reports that French national airline Air France has maintained daily flights between Paris and Zagreb with the start of the winter flight schedule, and from the first day of December, they are sending higher-capacity aircraft to Zagreb.
Air France was scheduled to increase the number of weekly flights between Zagreb and Paris in March 2020, introducing an additional, second daily flight. This did not happen due to the pandemic, but in the end, it was done by the partner of the French airline – Dutch KLM, which will continue to operate twice a day to Zagreb this winter.
However, KLM has reduced its capacity on the Zagreb route so that E170 and E190 aircraft (88 and 100 seats, respectively) now fly to Zagreb, instead of B737-700 and B737-800 aircraft (142 and 186 seats, respectively).
Air France is therefore increasing its capacity to Zagreb, so instead of E190 and E170 aircraft that flew to the Croatian capital all summer, A318 aircraft with a capacity of 131 seats will operate in the winter flight schedule between Zagreb and Paris. On certain dates with higher bookings, the carrier will use A319 and A320 aircraft. Only twice a week does Air France plan to use smaller E170 aircraft.
Despite the fact that Lufthansa has increased its capacity on the route to Frankfurt, the Air France – KLM group will offer a significantly higher number of connections to passengers to and from Zagreb through its hubs in Amsterdam and Paris, so probably more passengers will use the services of these two airlines.
Croatia Airlines also operates daily on this route with A319 and A320 aircraft, while Ryanair connects Zagreb and Beauvais twice a week.
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