Croatia Airlines to further develop Split base
Croatia Airlines plans to further expand its Split operations after initially announcing it will station two aircraft in the city this summer and launch five new routes. The carrier is expected to maintain a wider variety of destinations from Croatia’s second largest city during the coming 2022/2023 winter season and add more new routes in the summer of 2023. Speaking at the Aviation Arena webinar, the carrier’s Head of Network and Revenue Management, Krešimir Mlinar, said, “Based on the outlook that leisure travel and tourism will recover quicker than business travel following the coronavirus pandemic, we made certain changes to our network. This includes five new destinations from Split and the stationing of one Airbus jet and one Dash there. We have good expectations for the leisure market. We also have plans for winter, while next year we will do something similar. We are optimistic about the summer, which is illustrated through our forward bookings”.
Croatia Airlines will introduce flights from Split to Stockholm, Bucharest, Dublin and Milan, which were all served from Zagreb prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as Amsterdam. The airline operated to some of these destinations from Split in the past as well. Amsterdam was last served in October 2013, Dublin in October 1996 and Milan in September 2000. An Airbus A319 and a Dash 8 turboprop aircraft will be stationed in Split this summer, which will also enable the company to increase frequencies on a number of other routes. As a result, the airline will outstrip its pre-pandemic operations from Croatia’s second largest city.
Commenting on its performance this year, Mr Mlinar said, “Our biggest problem this year is the price of fuel. The A320 uses two and half tonnes of fuel per hour. This is a constant, even if a ton of fuel is around 400 euros like last year, 700 euros as was the case at the start of 2022, or 1.200 euros, which is the current price. The numbers are huge, and carriers will have to make up for it through their customers. Our main problem now is that, despite a rise in late bookings, tickets are still being purchased in advance, when the increased costs were not included in the fares for use this summer”. He added, “From June onwards, we expect high levels of fleet utilisation. Some aircraft types will be in use more than in 2019. That year we also had two jets on wet-lease so as to reduce seasonality. However, it was too risky to employ the same strategy this year”.
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