Three years after Brač airport faced closure, with the employees to be left without jobs, the central Dalmatian Airport experienced a business transformation, allowing it to become an indispensable part of the air transport infrastructure for the whole of Dalmatia in 2017.
Thanks to investment group “Bluesun Hotels” as the majority owner of about five million kuna, this island’s airport will have the possibility to land large jet aircraft with a seating capacity double those in the past 20 years. In addition, the plans for Brač airport for 2018 could see the landings of low-cost carriers who have already expressed interest in the possibility of receiving passengers, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on January 2, 2017.
While tourism is quiet on the largest central Dalmatian island, the airport in Brač is busy with construction fully underway to extend the airport runway from 1,400 meters to 1,760 meters. With this expansion, the airport will be able to land jet aircraft with 150 seats.
The new look of the airport with a longer runway, new supporting infrastructure, lighting and much more, will make Brač accessible and more desirable to Europe – with the ability to connect with European cities in less than 2 hours. From Vienna, flights will arrive to Brač in just 45 minutes, from Munich they will arrive in hour, and from Zagreb in just 35 minutes…
The “Croatia Airlines” Airbus 319, as well as other airlines and charter flights, will be able to land on the new runway on Brač. Negotiations are ongoing with a number of tour operators who have an interest in landing in 2017 and 2018, including French carriers who plan to fly the Embraer 190 with 112 seats. The Italian “Air Mistral” plans to link Napoli and Bari with Brač in 2017, and negotiations are being conducted about other destinations.
One of the most important acquisitions of the Brač airport was the deal with “Eurowings”, the low-cost airline owned by “Lufthansa”, which has an interest to fly to the island from 2018. It is also already known that “Croatia Airlines” will hold flights twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with Zagreb.
When all is said and done, the airport in Brač could see passenger traffic grow in the next year by as much as 60 to 70 percent, and could reach up to 25,000 passengers.
