Mostar Airport to get commercial flights after over two years
Mostar Airport is expected to welcome its first regular commercial flights in 27 months next summer after Eurowings scheduled the resumption of flights between Dusseldorf and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fifth largest city. At this point, operations between the two are set to commence on June 30 and run twice per week until the end of August. The low cost airline had previously maintained subsidised seasonal operations from both Stuttgart and Dusseldorf to Mostar, however, both were unsuccessful, with the airport blaming high fares for their failure. Mostar last saw scheduled commercial flights in March 2020, when Croatia Airlines maintained operations to Zagreb, which also failed to generate sufficient demand and have been terminated since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mostar Airport has struggled to attract customers over the past years and has been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Its main source of traffic - European charters serving religious pilgrims - have been all but wiped out. In 2020 the airport handled just 1.374 passengers, while during the January - November period of this year, figures barely improved with a total of 1.737 travellers passing through its doors. Despite the disappointing results, Mostar Airport anticipates a revival in 2022. “A fully operational airport is of strategic interest. Over the past six months, we have been working hard negotiating new routes that are needed to link Mostar to European destinations. A functional airport will enable us to fully utilise the benefits of our geographic location”, the Mayor of Mostar, Mario Kordić, said last week.
Mostar Airport has seen some early signs of recovery in recent months with several charters operated by Croatia Airlines to Dublin and Cork in Ireland, as well as a flight from Madrid earlier this month. “Statistics show that our primary source of passengers are pilgrims visiting the Medjugorje sight. As a result, we plan to do more to secure operations from markets such as Poland and Italy, from which we welcome most pilgrims, but we are also interested in flights from Spain, Ireland, Germany, Jordan, and Lebanon. In cooperation with local and foreign tour operators, we are working on a project targeting some 35.000 pilgrim passengers next season. We expect to obtain necessary assistance from all levels of government to subsidise one or two airlines that would be able to maintain these services and would be selected through a public call”, the General Manager of Mostar Airport, Ivan Ljubić, said. The airport’s busiest year so far was in 2013 when it welcomed 75.244 travellers through its doors.
Further flight details for the Dusseldorf - Mostar service can be found here.
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