Lufthansa Group starts strong in Ljubljana
Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines and Brussels Airlines have seen a strong start to their newly launched operations to Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport. The Head of Airport Services at operator Fraport Slovenija, Janez Krašnja, said, “Exceptional demand has been recorded during the first few days since the Lufthansa Group launched new flights, which demonstrates the potential of the Slovenian market. Even with the current scheduling, the flights are quite full”. Lufthansa Group’s Senior Sales Manager for Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Peter Pullem, noted, “Ljubljana Airport was cut off from our hubs and many other destinations overnight. Lufthansa Group, a leading European airline group, has recognised the great need for the connectivity of Slovenia, its population and the economy with our flight network, so we searched for capacities in record time and connected Ljubljana Airport with four important European hubs”. The Lufthansa Group member airlines now fly from Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels and Zurich to Ljubljana.
The German national carrier has already made changes to its planned 2020 summer operations to the Slovenian capital with the airline’s evening service from Frankfurt to remain in Ljubljana overnight. Therefore, as of March 29, Lufthansa will offer a more convenient early morning departure to Germany. On the other hand, just days after launching six weekly flights from Brussels, Mr Krašnja said he expects for the Belgian airline to introduce additional frequnecies from next summer, while strong demand and solid advanced bookings would likely result in a more convenient schedule. Finally, Helvetic Airways will be operating the Ljubljana route from Zurich on behalf of Swiss. It will mostly be utilising the new flagship of its fleet, the Embraer E190-E2 aircraft. The jet entered commercial service just six days ago.
Frankfurt, Zurich, Munich and Brussels are among Ljubljana Airport’s eight busiest routes, with Frankfurt ranking second after Istanbul, followed by Zurich, Munich and Brussels as its sixth, seventh and eighth busiest destinations. Last year, Adria Airways carried almost 146.000 passengers to Frankfurt, while some 86.000 flew to Munich. Of those, transfers made up 70% and 80% of all travellers on the two routes respectively. Passengers mostly connected to other European destinations, followed by services to North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America. Adria handled 74.235 travellers on its flights between Ljubljana and Brussels last year, 16% of which continued their journey onwards.
Austrian Airlines remains one of the notable Lufthansa Group members which has not attempted to fill the void left by Adria, however, this is primarily the result of a lack of spare capacity. Ljubljana Airport believes the airline will launch services from Vienna during the summer of 2020. "We are very pleased that, within a month of Adria's bankruptcy, we have succeeded in replacing flights at four out of five Lufthansa Group bases. As a result, we have mostly restored all key destinations from Ljubljana Airport. Of course, the network is not yet complete, but I believe that we will be able to greet another carrier at the start of the summer season”, Mr Krašnja said.
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