April 13, 2020 – Emirates has delayed its seasonal service between Zagreb and Dubai until July 2020.
After Ex Yu Aviation announced that American Airlines and Qatar Airways would suspend their seasonal services to Dubrovnik until 2021 due to the current coronavirus pandemic, our hope of a 2020 tourism season was dwindling.
However, is the recent announcement from Emirates reassuring?
Namely, Ex Yu Aviation reports that Emirates has delayed the start date of its daily seasonal service between Dubai and Zagreb from May 1 to July 1, 2020, instead of suspending the service for an entire year, like the others have thus far.
“Emirates has published a tentative schedule outlining its operations for the coming months. The airline is expected to resume the majority of its services, albeit at a reduced frequency, from late May and early June. Starting July, flights to Zagreb will be maintained on a daily basis with the carrier’s Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which has the capacity to seat 354 passengers. Further changes remain possible,” writes Ex Yu Aviation on its website.
Flydubai, Emirates partner, which runs to Dubrovnik, will resume regular services “when the time is right”, but until then, it will fly for repatriation purposes. Flydubai has been operating repatriation flights to Zagreb over the last few weeks for travelers to continue to their destinations via Croatia Airlines flights.
“We look forward to resuming our operations when the time is right and we are working closely with the authorities,” said Chief Commercial Officer, Hamad Obaidalla.
In other flight news, Air Canada Rouge has postponed its seasonal service between Toronto and Zagreb by a month, or moved the start date to July 1, instead of June 4, 2020. Croatia Airlines has suspended operations to London Heathrow until at least April 19, though the national carrier is still operating flights to Frankfurt and Brussels
Lufthansa Group confirmed the Germanwings closure last week, which is another important player in the Croatian low-cost market, and AirBaltic has canceled the newly announced flights between Lithuania and Croatia.
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