May the 14th, 2022 - Pula Airport is set to be connected with an impressive thirty different European destinations this year, which is excellent news not only for Istrian tourism but for the height of the main summer season across Croatia as a whole.
As Morski writes, in addition to scheduled and charter flights to Pula Airport, some very well-known low-cost airlines are flying this season: easyJet, Ryanair, then the German low-cost airline Eurowings, the Czech Smartwings, the Swiss Edelweiss Air, Norway's Air Shuttle and the Dutch low-cost airline Transavia Holland.
Pula Airport plans a traffic of about 400 thousand passengers this year, which is one hundred thousand passengers more than last year or almost five times more passengers than the initial pandemic year of 2020, when only 83 thousand passengers were recorded passing through the airport.
When it comes to the record-breaking, pre-pandemic year of 2019, Pula Airport had a traffic of almost 778 thousand passengers, which is a good example to look at when comparing the expectations when it comes to passengers this year.
According to the director of the Pula Airport, Nina Vojnic Zagar, these are the current plans for the announced flights, which are subject to change because the situation in the area is unstable owing to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
''During the month of May, we expect an increase in the activity of air companies, with more intensive operations (an increase in terms of frequencies) and the remaining flights of low-budget companies starting at the end of June. Last weekend (Saturday, April the 30th and Sunday, May the 1st), there was a turnover of 825 passengers and 23 rotations of regular and general aviation,'' said Vojnic Zagar for local portal Istra24.
Owing to sanctions, Pula Airport has been left without the impact of the Russian market
When asked how much air traffic will suffer due to the war in Ukraine following Russian invasion, especially given the fact that Pula Airport was connected to Russia by planes that landed there every weekend, Zagar said that last year there were 50,834 passengers from Russia and 21,670 passengers from Ukraine, which accounts for about 27 percent of the airport's total turnover.
Last season, Pula Airport had the largest number of airlines to and from Russia, and from this market there were as many as 12 weekly flights offered by five different airlines.
''Before the invasion of Ukraine, the expected number of passengers from the Russian and Ukrainian markets in 2022 was about 92,000 passengers,'' said Vojnic Zagar. It is obvious that this year we will be left without these emitting markets.
This year, Pula will be connected with 13 different European countries and about 30 cities by air, regular and charter lines.
For example, Great Britain with London, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Doncaster, the German cities of Frankfurt, Munich, Duesseldorf, Stuttgart, Cologne and, in France, Paris.
The planes will also fly to Poznan, Poland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Vienna in Austria, and there are as many as four Swiss cities included as well: Zurich, Geneva, Basel and St. Gallen. As for the north of Europe, Pula will be connected with Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg and the Finnish capital of Helsinki.
For more, make sure to check out our dedicated travel section.
