May 20, 2021 - The latest flight news to Croatia as only 11 international routes to Rijeka Airport will operate this summer.
Croatian Aviation reports that Rijeka Airport has announced a preliminary flight schedule with only 11 international routes to 10 destinations in Europe this summer season from the island of Krk. The first regular international flight this year on Krk is expected on May 29.
German Eurowings will have the largest number of lines to Rijeka this summer (just like previous seasons) and is planning 5 lines: from Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne, and Stuttgart.
This year's first international scheduled flight to Rijeka has been announced for Saturday, May 29, from Dusseldorf, on an A319 aircraft.
Eurowings is planning a significantly smaller number of weekly flights to Rijeka compared to the 2019 season, which is logical given the global pandemic:
The Berlin - Rijeka - Berlin line has been announced from the end of June to the end of October, twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays.
The Düsseldorf - Rijeka - Düsseldorf line will operate from May 29, once a week, on Saturdays, and from the beginning of July, the second weekly flight will be introduced on Wednesdays.
The Hamburg - Rijeka - Hamburg line is planned from the end of June, three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, while the line from Cologne has been announced twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
The Stuttgart - Rijeka - Stuttgart line will operate twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays, from the beginning of July to the middle of October.
In 2018, the Dutch Transavia started traffic to Rijeka on the line from Eindhoven, and the same was in traffic last summer. The start of traffic is expected only in July, and from then, the company plans to travel to Rijeka as many as four times a week, every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The long-term partner of Rijeka Airport, Air Baltic, plans to introduce its seasonal line from Riga only in July. Two flights a week are announced on Mondays and Thursdays. The company announced a line between Rijeka and Vilnius in February last year, but it was not realized for obvious reasons - the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new Lufthansa line from Frankfurt was supposed to start operating in May but was postponed to early July. Lufthansa will operate to Rijeka once a week, on Saturdays.
The Munich-Rijeka-Munich route, operated by two airlines, Lufthansa and Croatia Airlines, has been announced from the end of June. Croatia will operate on it three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays, and Lufthansa on Saturdays.
LOT introduced a line between Rijeka and Warsaw last summer, and flights have been announced since June 19, also once a week, on Saturdays.
Judging by the current schedule, Rijeka will have the busiest traffic on Saturdays, when as many as 9 aircraft operations are expected on international routes. Still, the other days of the week are extremely weak: only two international flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays, three on Tuesdays, five on Thursdays, and no flights announced on Fridays!
Compared to 2019, the year before the pandemic, Rijeka was left without several lines. This year, it will not be possible to travel directly to London (in 2019, two lines, to Stansted and Gatwick), Marseille (Volotea), Belgrade (Air Serbia), Stockholm, and Brussels (Ryanair), Tel Aviv (Arkia), and Hanover Eurowings). In the published schedule, there are no regular charter lines from Paris and Košice that operated in the summer of 2019.
In 2019, Rijeka managed to reach 200 thousand passengers in one year for the first time, but already in 2020, there was a sharp decline due to the impact of the pandemic - only 27,680 passengers passed through this airport last year. Given the preliminary schedule and the modest announcements of the airlines, it is obvious that the number of passengers at Rijeka Airport will not be large this year either.
In addition to the mentioned international destinations, Rijeka Airport also has direct routes to Osijek, Split, and Dubrovnik as part of the PSO program. These lines operate twice a week throughout the year.
Given the announced traffic in neighboring airports (Zagreb, Zadar, and Pula), the number of international routes to Rijeka, according to the schedule HERE, will be relatively small, so most passengers who gravitate to this airport will start or end their travels to the three airports mentioned above.
This will be the case until one airline decides to connect Rijeka Airport with a major European hub, such as London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or Paris, at least three times a week throughout the year.
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