Istanbul becomes Ljubljana’s busiest air route

Istanbul became Ljubljana Airport’s busiest individual route in 2022 overtaking Frankfurt, with no carrier managing to outperform their pre-Covid passenger levels in the Slovenian capital last year. The first quarter of 2022 was still heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. If all of London's airports are taken into account, figures on services to and from Ljubljana just edged ahead of the Istanbul route. Turkish Airlines carried a total of 119.631 passengers between Turkey’s largest city and Ljubljana, some 9.000 more than those travelling to Frankfurt with Lufthansa. Despite strong point-to-point demand, Turkish Airlines was also Slovenia’s second busiest transfer airline behind Lufthansa. Holiday destinations in Turkey proved most popular with Turkish Airlines’ passengers from Slovenia, followed by the likes of Tel Aviv, Bangkok and the Caucuses.

Ljubljana Airport's busiest scheduled routes, 2022

Turkish Airlines is still on the road to recovery in Ljubljana, with the carrier expected to surpass its pre-Covid passenger figures this year. In 2019, the airline handled 147.548 travellers between the Slovenian capital and Istanbul. Turkish Airlines’ General Manager for Slovenia, Ufuk Unal, said the subsidies provided by the Slovenian government for airlines maintaining flights to Ljubljana over the past two years helped the carrier recover on the Slovenian market. “The subsidies were very effective for us to rebuild frequencies. At the beginning, following Covid and the start of the recovery process, we were losing money but we managed to cover some of the losses with the support from the Slovenian government. It was an incentive for us to sustain operations. We lost more than half a million dollars in Slovenia in 2021 but we were able to cover some of these losses with the Slovenian state aid”, Mr Unal said.

During 2022, the Lufthansa Group held a 20% passenger share at Ljubljana Airport. LOT Polish Airlines was the only carrier that came close to overtaking its pre-Covid figures in Ljubljana, with just 1.000 fewer passengers last year when compared to 2019. The Amsterdam and Munich service saw the biggest decline compared to their pre-Covid figures. Amsterdam had 57.910 fewer passengers on the Ljubljana route compared to 2019 and 64.357 fewer travellers on 2018. Similarly, Munich saw 45.724 fewer passengers last year than in 2019 and 48.147 fewer travellers than on 2018. Lufthansa did not restore flights between the Bavarian capital and Ljubljana from March 2020 until late March 2022.