The Agency for Civil Flight expects until the end the year to reach a figure of one million passengers including the approved 13 more flights per week and the expected passengers frequency for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Low-priced ticket offered by low cost airlines from Skopje airport stimulate business relations with foreign markets, and the demand for flights grows. To meet the growing demand, and at the request of airlines operating in Macedonia, ACF approved 13 more flights for the winter timetable, which came into force at midnight between Saturday and Sunday. Winter flight schedule will be in effect until the end of April 2014.
According to the agency, 97 weekly frequencies of flights are approved, as opposed to 84 in the previous winter flight schedule. Most of the newly approved air flights belong to the low cost “Wizz Air” which received 26 weekly flights (previous winter were 18), i.e. received three new flights for the flight destinations it serves, and five weekly flights for the new destinations – Stockholm and Gothenburg.
More flights are approved for Istanbul. The Turkish airline company “Turkish Airlines” got 14 flights a week, so far were 10 on the relation Skopje- Istanbul and vice versa. The third most frequently destination – Zurich to the Swiss airline company “Helvetica” got approved six flights per day and one flight from Ohrid.
After Istanbul and Zurich, the top destination is Vienna, but often, the Macedonian passengers flying to London and Malmo, and to Ljubljana, which is the traditional transfer destination. Most of the passengers traveled with “Wizz Air”, “Turkish Airlines”, “Austrian Airlines”, “Adria Airways” and “Pegasus Airlines.”
The ACF expect the growth in approved flights, while the charter flights are expected during the Christmas and New Year, which this year is expected to reach the number of one million passengers, a figure that Macedonian airports had in 2001. The ACF highlighted the possibility for increasing the number of flights if there is interest from some airline companies for the destinations Brussels and Frankfurt.
The achievement of one million passengers is realistic looking at the past 9 -month results. As of September 30, through two Macedonian airports passed 839,000 passengers, which is 18.4 percent more than last year when were transported 708,611 people. In addition, for the nine months of this year were realized 9675 flights of aircrafts, while for the same period last year there were almost a thousand less.
With the growth of air-traffic, there is space for additional decline of ticket prices, which will contribute to the eventual reduction of prices of airport services. The ACF said that although there is no such announcement so far, still it is possible to have discounting of services to the Air Traffic Control that charges airlines for landing and taking off, as well as for flights over the Macedonian sky.
The ACF expects that with the signed agreements with Italy, Belgium, Hungary and Luxembourg, and soon with Brazil, Azerbaijan and Chile, to establish new flights and to open new destinations.
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