February 4, 2023 - Zadar Airport is preparing for Schengen and traffic growth with an investment of 2.2 million euros in the renovation of additional passenger terminal annexes and a runway extension.

As Hina / Poslovni report, the airport will, like other airports, officially enter the Schengen regime on March 26.

This is a capital investment with extensive work at that airport, which in 2022 had more than one million passengers for the first time, 1.1 million to be exact. Since the plans and predictions for 2023 are even higher, they expect this investment will allow accepting intercontinental flights.

"The arrangement of additional annexes of the building, which will house the international arrival/departure of "non-Schengen passengers," will also be arranged, and everything is part of a larger project by which the airport aims to become the first airport in Croatia using solar energy and an electric bus, to strengthen its "green and sustainable business," they emphasize.

From the moment they enter Schengen, they expect an easier flow of passengers, especially since most passengers will be domestic, who do not have to go through passport control, but only a security check.

Part of the passengers who are not in that regime will still go through passport control, but given that this has been the case until now, there will practically be no changes for them.

"We have great announcements for 2023, and we expect 5 to 10 percent more passenger traffic compared to a record 2022 when we recorded a million for the first time. This is an exceptional result, considering that we are the first Croatian airport to exceed pre-pandemic traffic", they say from the Zadar airport.

In accordance with the announced increase in traffic, they say that they will also hire more people, which is why they had a call for seasonal workers in January, for whom the selection process is ongoing.

They believe that they will be able to cover all the needs for seasonal workers, all the more so because they see that there is sufficient interest in working at the airport, and they also state that last year in 2022, they had an average of 248 employees per month, while in 2023 they plan to their increase that number to 254.

Currently, in the winter flight schedule, they (only) have daily domestic flights of Croatia Airlines (to Zagreb and Pula), which, as they announce every year, will change significantly with the summer flight schedule.

"Although it is still too early to discuss the flight schedule, we can already confirm that there will be new lines and airlines. For example, this year, we have S.A.S. with a line to Copenhagen, and three new lines of the Italian carrier Milano Malpensa (MXP), the German Munster, and the Polish Rzeszów have been announced so far," they revealed for Hina.

Their now traditionally largest partner for the summer flight schedule, Ryanair, offers 46 routes.

When asked about the financial results of operations in 2022, they estimate that Zadar Airport will have a profit of around HRK 24.47 million in 2022, which would be 203 percent more than the profit in 2021, but also 262 percent more than in 2019.

This was also driven by a significant increase in income in 2022, but considering that the annual reports on operations for 2022 have not yet been completed, they only amount to the revenue for nine months of 2022, of almost HRK 95 million, while in the whole of 2021, they achieved over HRK 65.5 million in revenue.

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