Brno Airport has been slowly turning into a ghost town, with only two regular destinations. Meanwhile, air traffic at the airport in Bratislava has grown by 11 routes, including Eindhoven, which used to fly from Brno. Photo: Brno Airport – Tuřany // Credit: Casadei Graphics.
Brno, May 17 (BD) – Bratislava Airport took the opportunity stemming from the situation in the South Moravian market, says Czech TV reporter Michal Cagala on Twitter.
Na bratislavském letišti ucítili příležitost na jihomoravském trhu. Brněnské letiště skomírá s 2 pravidelnými linkami a Bratislava teď začala cílit právě na obyvatele jižní Moravy. Rozrostla se o 11 linek, včetně Eindhovenu, kam se z Brna létat přestalo pic.twitter.com/gnPfv3rPqk
— Michal Cagala (@mcagala) May 15, 2018
As recently as May 15, the first thing that popped up when one opened the Brno Airport website was the following announcement: “Due to reconstruction of the bridge on the access road to the airport (Evropská street) we would like to inform passengers about long delays that may occur on the way to/from the airport (one lane shuttle traffic with traffic lights applied). Thank you for your understanding.” (sic) This is not an optimistic start to a journey.
According to the latest statistics released on May 11, during the first four months of this year, 506,000 passengers passed through Bratislava’s Letisko M. R. Štefánika Airport, some 21% more than in the same period last year.
In April 2018 alone, the airport saw 152,721 passengers and had a total of 2,453 inbound and outbound flights. This was the second consecutive month that the airport broke its all-time record for number of passengers accommodated.
To compare it with the situation in Brno, around 470,000 people passed through Tuřany last year, compared to circa 418,000 in 2016. Its record for number of passengers, however, came in 2011 (557,952 passengers). In the recent years, the number of passengers has never come close to this level.
Chart: Number of passengers 2006-2016. Source: Brno Airport
Jozef Pojedinec, CEO of M. R. Štefánika Airport, said that “among the busiest routes in the first four months of the year were flights to London, Kiev, Skopje, and Prague. More recently introduced destinations such as Sofia, Warsaw, and Bologna, have also been doing very good.”
Currently, 17 airlines – Ryanair, Pobeda, flydubai, Czech Airlines, Wizz Air, SmartWings, Travel Service, Air Cairo, ABS Jets, AirExplore, Air – Transport Europe, EHC Service, Elite Jet, Go2Sky, JetAge, Tatra Jet, and Georgian Airways – are operating flights from Bratislava.
Meanwhile, the Region of South Moravia announced an end to co-operation with the Romanian airline Blue Air, which was to provide new flights from Brno, on March 26, 2018. (See previous Brno Daily article, ‘Blue Air-South Moravia deal falls through’, for more information.)
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