December 8, 2020 - The latest news for flights to Croatia as Flydubai replaces Emirates in Zagreb next year.

Ex Yu Aviation reports that Flydubai will replace Emirates on the Dubai-Zagreb route next summer!

Recall, Emirates officially canceled the Dubai-Zagreb route for all of 2021 back in October. The airline had planned to operate on the Dubai-Zagreb route in this year's summer flight schedule, but due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the start of operations on this route was first postponed, and then completely canceled for this year.

Emirates then left daily flights on this route on sale for the 2021 summer flight schedule, but ultimately canceled the route entirely. Namely, the airline canceled all flights to Zagreb for the next year, closed its office at Zagreb Airport, and fired its local employees. Emirates also canceled their routes between Dubai - Edinburgh, Dubai - Porto, and Dubai - St. Petersburg.

A logical move, Flydubai will now operate on this route three times a week, beginning February 3, 2021, before running four flights a week from March 28, 2021, and daily from June 1, 2021,

Flydubai will operate using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which Ex Yu Aviation says will likely be upgraded to the 737 MAX once it receives regulatory approval to return to the skies. 

However, capacity between Zagreb and Dubai will be significantly reduced compared to 2019, offering 57,420 seats on 330 flights. Recall, in the summer of 2019, Emirates offered 137,510 seats on 380 flights on the three-class Boeing 777 aircraft. Thus, Flydubai will operate with a capacity reduction of 58.2%.

Ex Yu Aviation also reports that Flydubai should resume its seasonal summer service to Dubrovnik from May 13, 2021, which would operate until August 27. FlyDubai had also previously announced regular flights to Zagreb from December this winter, which will no longer happen as the airline withdrew all flights on the route until the beginning of February 2021. It is now only a question of when those flights will also be canceled.

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October 3, 2020 - The latest news for flights to Croatia as Emirates cancels Zagreb for 2021.

Croatian Aviation reports that Emirates, a world-famous airline based in Dubai, has canceled the Dubai-Zagreb route for all of 2021!

The company planned to operate on the Dubai-Zagreb route in this year's summer flight schedule. Still, due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the start of operations on this route was first postponed, and then it was completely canceled for this year.

Emirates then left daily flights on this route on sale for the 2021 summer flight schedule, but that too has now changed. Namely, the company canceled all flights to Zagreb for the next year, closed its office at Zagreb Airport, and fired its employees. The large B777-300ER aircraft in Zagreb every day will not return to the Croatian capital any time soon, which is certainly a financial blow to the airport, given the revenue it generated from the daily landings of this company's aircraft.

The arrival of this airline in Zagreb was truly a success for the management of Zagreb Airport, but its complete withdrawal can certainly be considered a failure. Emirates connected Zagreb with the rest of the world on a daily basis, offering excellent service to passengers on its flights on which it operated modernly equipped aircraft. The departure of this airline is a step backward for Zagreb Airport. The management had to do everything in their power to keep this company on schedule for 2021 but unfortunately failed to do so.

In addition to the Dubai-Zagreb line for 2021, Emirates also canceled the following lines:

Dubai - Edinburgh,

Dubai - Porto,

Dubai - St. Petersburg.

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May 23, 2020 - The latest news from around Croatia’s airports for flights to Croatia with updates from Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik.

Croatian Aviation reports that German leisure company, Condor, announced they'd be resuming regular international lines from several German cities to well-known tourist destinations across Europe, including Split.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, this German airline regularly flew on seasonal routes from German airports to Rijeka, Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik, but in the current summer flight schedule, the lines have not yet started operating.

In its last announcement, the company announced the resumption of operations, and the first line to Croatia will be introduced from the end of June.

From June 26, Condor will fly on two routes to Split:

Frankfurt - Split, from June 26, twice a week (Fridays and Sundays),

Dusseldorf - Split, from June 26, twice a week (Fridays and Sundays).

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In addition to these two direct routes, the company, in cooperation with Lufthansa, also offers flights to Hamburg and Munich with short transfers. The mentioned lines will be operated by A320 aircraft, with a capacity of 180 seats.

Tickets are already on sale on the airline's official website. Split will thus be connected to Dusseldorf 3 times a week, considering that Eurowings, as we announced earlier, will fly between these two cities from June 20.

The airline has not yet confirmed the start of traffic from German cities to Zadar, Rijeka and Dubrovnik.

Furthermore, Croatian Aviation reported that Aegean Airlines announced new start dates for operations to destinations in Croatia.

The Greek airline plans to fly to 3 destinations in Croatia: Dubrovnik, Split and Zagreb in the current summer flight schedule. The line to Zadar was canceled in 2019.

Athens-Dubrovnik will be in operation twice a week from June 25, wit A320 aircraft. Aircraft of this type at Aegean has a capacity of 174 seats. The increase to five-week flights is planned for July 3.

The Athens-Split line has been announced four times a week from July 6, with the A319 aircraft, with a capacity of 144 seats.

The Athens-Zagreb route will again operate from July 1, three times a week, on A319 and A320 aircraft (capacity 144 and 174 seats, respectively).

Finally, Croatian Aviation reports that Emirates, an airline from the United Arab Emirates, has additionally canceled the start of operations on the Zagreb-Dubai route.

Although this seasonal line was supposed to start operating on the first day of the summer flight schedule, this did not happen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

After that, the company repeatedly delayed the start of operations on this line, and the latest information was that this well-known company would come to the Croatian capital again from July 1 this year.

Emirates usually flies on the Dubai-Zagreb route every day, but due to reduced demand, flights are now postponed until August 1, when the line should start operating with only four flights per week (Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays). B47-300ER aircraft with a capacity of 354 seats have been announced on the route.

Given that this is the only seasonal Emirates route in the entire destination network, there is a high probability that this airline will not return to Zagreb this season.

April 13, 2020 - Emirates has delayed its seasonal service between Zagreb and Dubai until July 2020. 

After Ex Yu Aviation announced that American Airlines and Qatar Airways would suspend their seasonal services to Dubrovnik until 2021 due to the current coronavirus pandemic, our hope of a 2020 tourism season was dwindling. 

However, is the recent announcement from Emirates reassuring?

Namely, Ex Yu Aviation reports that Emirates has delayed the start date of its daily seasonal service between Dubai and Zagreb from May 1 to July 1, 2020, instead of suspending the service for an entire year, like the others have thus far. 

“Emirates has published a tentative schedule outlining its operations for the coming months. The airline is expected to resume the majority of its services, albeit at a reduced frequency, from late May and early June. Starting July, flights to Zagreb will be maintained on a daily basis with the carrier’s Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which has the capacity to seat 354 passengers. Further changes remain possible,” writes Ex Yu Aviation on its website. 

Flydubai, Emirates partner, which runs to Dubrovnik, will resume regular services “when the time is right”, but until then, it will fly for repatriation purposes. Flydubai has been operating repatriation flights to Zagreb over the last few weeks for travelers to continue to their destinations via Croatia Airlines flights.

"We look forward to resuming our operations when the time is right and we are working closely with the authorities,” said Chief Commercial Officer, Hamad Obaidalla.

In other flight news, Air Canada Rouge has postponed its seasonal service between Toronto and Zagreb by a month, or moved the start date to July 1, instead of June 4, 2020. Croatia Airlines has suspended operations to London Heathrow until at least April 19, though the national carrier is still operating flights to Frankfurt and Brussels

Lufthansa Group confirmed the Germanwings closure last week, which is another important player in the Croatian low-cost market, and AirBaltic has canceled the newly announced flights between Lithuania and Croatia. 

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November 6, 2019 - Emirates’ Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations in Europe, Thierry Aucoc, talks about the potential of the service to Zagreb and further developing Croatia in the future.

Emirates launched a daily service to the Croatian capital from Dubai back in June 2017, which worked from May 31 to the end of October this year. The winter timetable on this service is operated by Emirates' partner flydubai, which reduced the number of flights this winter from seven to four per week on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. However, during the Christmas and New Year holidays, flydubai will increase the number of flights to six a week. 

Ex Yu Aviation reports that Emirates sees potential in the Dubai-Zagreb service, and is even monitoring the progress of Dubrovnik. 

“We decided to launch Zagreb a bit more than two years ago and it is corresponding with our development in Europe. We have a wide coverage in Europe, and we understood that Croatia has big potential for two reasons. First, it is a destination that is really interesting for travel from Asia, Australia, China and Taiwan. Therefore, there is a lot of incoming traffic to Zagreb and the entire country in general. From Croatia it is a way to offer the local population a link to our Dubai hub. There is a lot of demand from Croatia to the world. This is primarily to Dubai but also beyond, for example, to destinations in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, such as Phuket in Thailand,” said Emirates’ Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations in Europe, Thierry Aucoc.

Aucoc added:

“I was checking the results of airports in Croatia and I was amazed to see that many have double-digit growth. I noticed that Zagreb is now at 3.5 million passengers per year, which is a very good result. We are monitoring other airports in the country too. We are closely following the performance in Dubrovnik because we are offering seasonal flights to this city through Flydubai”. Aucoc went on to say that 258 Croatian nationals work at Emirates.

On October 26, 2019, the Emirates seasonal service between Dubai and Zagreb concluded. Emirates' partner flydubai operates the winter service. Aucoc said that Zagreb was the first to implement the new route-sharing strategy between the two airlines. 

“Zagreb is an example of how much our cooperation with Flydubai managed to improve our results. We served the route in winter with our Boeing 777 aircraft. Then last year, the route was maintained for five months by Flydubai aircraft. This winter, Flydubai will operate for the entire winter season because it emerged that this route is not as strong in winter, so we can still continue serving Zagreb well,” said Martin Gross, Emirates’ Area Manager. 

Gross also spoke about reducing the number of flights to Zagreb this winter, which is down to four flights per week. 

 "Zagreb was operated with Boeing 737 MAX equipment but had to be moved to the B737-800. Therefore, the entire flight plan had to change and has been partially reduced. Now we have to see when the B737 MAX is allowed to fly again.”

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page. 

September 6, 2019 - And getting to your destination in Croatia has never been easier thanks to Solo Transfers. 

Croatia has proven to be one of the most popular destinations for a summer holiday, though it’s not hard to see why. While the sweltering sun and sparkling sea are shoo-ins for the summer, Croatia’s capital and continental region offer year-round tourism and an exciting alternative for adventure tourists and cyclists. 

Croatia’s popularity doesn’t look like its going anywhere anytime soon, so it’s no surprise that it didn’t take long for some of the world’s top airlines to catch onto the Croatia buzz and ensure their passengers can get to the destination comfortably, without too many connections, and, perhaps most importantly, with ease. 

Some of Croatia’s biggest markets, like the USA, Canada, and Australia, are luckier than ever to have connections carrying them to Croatia with convenience. 

Recall, travelers in America can be thankful that American Airlines connected the United States and Croatia for the first time in almost 30 years with their seasonal service between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik this summer. The Oneworld member began operations between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik from June 7, which will run until September 27, 2019. The airline will add a fourth weekly flight on Sundays in September and already announced that there is no slowing down next year. Thus, American Airlines will operate the Philadelphia-Dubrovnik route daily in 2020, which will commence on June 4, 2020! 

Copyright Romulic & Stojcic 

Furthermore, back in 2018, Air Canada Rouge commenced its seasonal service from Toronto to Zagreb, which saw the return of the Air Canada brand to Croatia after 27 years. Air Canada operates four times a week between Toronto and Zagreb and runs until October. Air Transat also operates between the two cities on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays during the peak season.

And our friends from Australia haven’t been left out, either. Since many Australians fly over Dubai onwards to Croatia, the daily Emirates connection between Zagreb and Dubai has been a lifesaver. However, FlyDubai will operate the Zagreb-Dubai line instead of Emirates this winter, just as they did last winter. Namely, FlyDubai will replace Emirates for the entire winter flight schedule, and take over operations from October 27, 2019, to March 28, 2020. Thus, after November 11, no flights will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while some weeks will have no flights on Mondays. The daily frequency returns around the Christmas and New Year holidays, i.e., from December 13, 2019, to January 13, 2020.  

Because getting to Croatia is now easier than ever, wouldn’t it make sense that getting to your Croatian destination should follow suit? Thanks to Solo Transfers, you can count on a reliable and friendly transfer service to get you where you need to go. Whether you’re flying in from the States to Dubrovnik, or trekking from Canada or Australia to Zagreb, Solo Transfers promises door-to-door service any time of the year. 

You can read more about Solo Transfers here. 

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page. 

April 3, 2019 - The latest news from around Croatia’s airports for new flights to Croatia with updates from Zadar, Pula, and Zagreb.

The answer is yes, Flydubai is returning to Zagreb, but only temporarily.

Of the other airlines flying into Croatia, Ryanair and Norwegian both received a lower than four star rating.

The Zagreb and Dubai route continues to be popular among travelers, even in the winter.