Direct flights from Prague in 2023: New York, Thailand and Arabia may be joined by Seoul, possibly Hanoi
For the time being, Prague Airport has six regular long-distance connections confirmed for 2023. Five of them connect the Czech capital with the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Most of them are already well-established routes to Doha in Qatar (Qatar Airways), to the tourist heart of the United Arab Emirates Dubai (Emirates, Flydubai, Smartwings), to Kuwait (Jazeera Airways), to the cities of Salalah and Muscat in Oman (SalamAir) and also to of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Flynas).
A long-distance line to New York is also confirmed – the American company Delta Air Lines will fly to John F. Kennedy International Airport again in the summer. Even in view of the positive experience from this summer, when Delta’s aircraft were almost 100% occupied, as stated by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prague Airport, Jiří Pos. The airport is negotiating with the carrier about a possible extension of the time for which Delta would connect Prague with New York, from the end of April to the end of October.
New direct charter flights to the Thai province of Krabi will be launched by the travel agency Čedok from January. At the same time, it will continue next year with charters on the island of Nosy Be in the north of Madagascar, to the Dominican Republic and to Zanzibar. It transports tourists in cooperation with the Polish airline LOT and the Italian Neos.
It is also possible to include other destinations that Czechs could visit, either next year or the year after. “In the North American region, we are negotiating with recommended companies American Airlines, Air Canada, Air Transat, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines about possible connections to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and the Canadian capitals of Montreal and Toronto,” he told E15 newspaper Pos. However, it is more likely that these connections will not start until 2024.
“Unfortunately, those companies suffer from a lack of aircraft and crews, so they are mainly focused on meeting the high demand for domestic transport in the USA and on the renewal of previously existing transatlantic flights to Western Europe,” added Pos.
On the contrary, the restoration of direct lines between the South Korean Seoul and Prague, as early as next year, as previously indicated by representatives of the Korean Air company, appears to be very useful.
“The soul is our greatest and closest priority. We negotiate flights to Hanoi with the Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways. We are trying to negotiate a route to Taiwan with China Airlines, we are also dealing with Singapore,” explained Pos. In turn, the carrier Thai AirAsia could connect Prague with the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. While flights to Seoul are expected to start next year, the other mentioned destinations are more likely to have a horizon of one to two years.
The gradual (re)introduction of connections and increasing their frequency is generally based on the growing demand for air transport, which is recovering from the pandemic slowdown. The IATA association, to which Czech Airlines and Smartwings also belong, by the way, therefore expects the airline industry to be profitable next year for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. He has 4.8 billion dollars (111 billion crowns) to earn. It lost $6.9 billion this year, which was less than expected. It estimated a loss of 9.7 billion. Airline losses for the crisis years 2020 and 2021 amounted to tens of billions, IATA said.
Beijing’s policy regarding the easing of pandemic restrictions will have a significant influence on the fulfillment of optimistic forecasts for next year. IATA is calculating a scenario where China begins to reopen to international traffic and gradually relaxes from the zero tolerance of covid-19.
The restart of aviation also appears in the numbers of Václav Havel Airport. This recently crossed the ten million passenger mark. For the whole year, 10.7 million people are to pass through it, i.e. two million more than they had planned for Ruzyna. Even last year, the number of checked-in passengers shrank to 4.4 million due to pandemic restrictions. The previous record from 2019 is 17.8 million checked-in passengers. The airport should also return to profit this year, according to Pos, the operating profit should be around two billion crowns compared to last year’s 180 million.