✈ Lufthasa Group is dominating at Sarajevo International Airport

Statistical data is showing that airlines operating under the Lufthansa umbrella are dominating at Sarajevo International Airport. Airlines belonging to the Lufthansa group operating at Sarajevo Airport are as follows; Lufthansa, Lufthansa City Line, Austrian Airlines, Germanwings and as of April 2015-  Swiss International Airlines. They are currently transporting more passengers than any other airline from Sarajevo.  In the days to come I will be posting detailed statistical data for some airports served from Sarajevo, including (Munich, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Vienna and Cologne) and also some additional routes from Tuzla for 2013 and partially 2014.

Lufthansa A320 at Sarajevo airport, photo by Kontrolaletenja

In 2013 Lufthansa Group carried 340.672 passengers to & from Sarajevo out of total 665.638 passengers using the airport that year. Lufthansa Group’s share at Sarajevo International Airport in 2013 was 51.18%. In 2014 this number started changing for the first time with a large presence of Turkish Airlines and with the arrival of Pegasus Airlines. Air Serbia (Etihad Group) is planning to take advantage of the transfer passengers from Sarajevo this summer with the use of a larger aircraft between Belgrade and Sarajevo(Airbus 319 will be used in summer timetable instead of ATR-72). Sarajevo airport has been a stronghold of Star Alliance and hopefully this will change with growing presence of Air Serbia and the possible arrival of an airline from another airline alliance, preferably Alitalia (Sky Team); with flights to Rome or Milan, or KLM (Sky Team) with flights to Amsterdam. The great factor in breaking the Star Alliance monopoly would be a strong national carrier of Bosnia and Herzegovina but at the moment this is unfortunately not possible due to BH Airlines being on the verge of ceasing operations.  However, another great choice for passengers would be the arrival of low cost airlines such as Wizzair, which would definitely make air travel more affordable for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and shake up Lufthansa group monopoly. Slowly but surely with new airlines arriving Star Alliance monopoly should be lessen every year, with this year addition of FlyDubai flights to Dubai and Wizzair adding more routes from Tuzla will push Star Alliance airlines to lower the price of tickets to Sarajevo. For the first time ever it is possible to find flights at  significantly better price to Sarajevo than Zagreb or Belgarde from destinations across USA and Canada.    

Lufthansa group passengers statistics for Sarajevo airport for the year 2013.

Airline	Route	Number of passengers
Luthansa	Munich-Sarajevo-Munich	142.282
Austrian Airlines	Vienna-Sarajevo-Vienna	119.272
Germanwings	Cologne-Sarajevo-Cologne	79.118
Total Lufthansa Group		340.672