Slovenia failed to reach an agreement with Wizz Air, Ryanair
The Slovenian Ministry of Infrastructure announced that neither Wizz Air nor Ryanair had reached an agreement on the introduction of new routes to the country. It noted that preliminary talks had taken place with both airlines, but no agreement had been reached with either of the two low-cost carriers. “At these meetings, there was no talk of specific routes, but we offered them the possibility of flying to the Maribor airport, which has lower fees than the Ljubljana airport,” they wrote. Both carriers have shown interest in concluding cooperation agreements with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology regarding the introduction of new routes. Wizz Air currently operates a single year-round route to Ljubljana and one seasonal summer route, while Slovenia is the only member state of the European Union to which Ryanair does not fly.
The Slovenian Ministry of Infrastructure has announced that it is preparing a long-term solution to improve the air connectivity of the country, which suffered from the collapse of the former national carrier Adria Airways in 2019 and the resulting coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The Slovenian aviation sector is still one of the markets in Europe that is the slowest are recovering from the Covid-19 crisis. “For a long-term solution to the aforementioned problem, we are preparing for an analysis of air connectivity, both from a traffic and an economic point of view, which will be the basis for determining long-term goals for ensuring adequate air connectivity”, announced the Ministry of Infrastructure and admitted that there were subsidies that were offered to carriers already flying to Ljubljana in order to maintain traffic with Slovenia, only partially successful: “To a certain extent, we managed to maintain the routes of foreign carriers. airlines, encourage the re-establishment of regular routes that were interrupted due to the pandemic, and encourage new airlines to fly to Slovenia as well.
The Ministry considers it important to improve the air connectivity of the country. “It is crucial for Slovenia to join global trends. As an export-oriented economy, we can only be competitive with a physical presence on world markets, which is guaranteed by regular and reliable air connections. Solid air connections are even more important for the tourism sector, since we want to attract as many foreign guests from more distant markets to Slovenia as possible, and this segment is also very important for congress tourism.” He added: “It is necessary to implement additional short-term measures, namely subsidizing additional new routes and encouraging increased frequencies to the most important destinations for our economy and tourism.”
The data show that frequencies on all other existing lines from Ljubljana, with the exception of flights to Istanbul, are lower than before the pandemic. The ministry announced that it is unlikely that the majority of Adria Airways flights to the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans will be re-established, as these lines are mainly intended for transfer passengers. However, he also found that frequencies and timetables to many points in Central and Western Europe are still unsatisfactory. The Association for Transport at the Chamber of Commerce of Slovenia estimates that in 2026, Ljubljana Airport will reach the number of passengers from 2019. The same prediction was made earlier by the airport operator Fraport Slovenia.