✈ Air Serbia performance at Banja Luka International Airport

Air Serbia is the only airline operating to/from Banja Luka International Airport with five weekly flights from Belgrade using ATR-72 aircraft with 66 seats. Four weekly flights were introduced with the beginning of summer time table on March 27^th, additional fifth weekly flight started on April 20^th and will last until October 29, when flights will go back to three weekly. With the beginning of Air Serbia’s flights to New York on June 23^rd, number of passengers on flight to and from Banja Luka should improve too.

Month 2016	Total transported PAX	Total  Departing  PAX	Total Arriving PAX	Total number of flights	Average number of PAX per flight	Average CLF
January	1.105	597	508	26	43	65,15%
February	875	455	420	22	40	60,60%
March	1.310	678	632	32	41	62,12%
April	1.425	643	782	38	38	57,57%
TOTAL Jan-Apr 2016	4.715	2.373	2.342	118	40	60,60%

PAX- passengers / CLF-cabin load factor

Banja Luka Int. Airport overview, photo by banjaluka-airport.com

Banja Luka is second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina with population of 200.000.  City of Banja Luka ad its region with population of 400.000 has great potential for low cost airline flights to Scandinavia, Switzerland and Germany, where large population of citizens from this region is currently living. Due to very incompetent management of the airport who is appointed by the ruling  SNDS party (airport management is lacking basic management skills) the airport is loss making company and its surviving on the government subsidies. The airport is used mainly by the officials  of the local government for business and private flights on government owned Cessna Citation Jet (E7-SMS). The airport with 5 weekly flights only,  has 62 employees, (incredible huge number of employees for such small airport with barely any flights). How is that possible? Like many other state owned companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, being employed by such company is the matter of loyalty to the ruling party, and has nothing to do with your knowledge,  requirements and qualifications for the job !  Next to Banja Luka Airport perfect  example of mismanagement and above practices is Air Bosna, who changed the name to BH Airlines but besides the name change everything else stayed the same. Corruption and mismanagement continued. The company with only two ATR-72 aircraft in its fleet had more than 100 employees with two flights per day(most of the time flights were canceled, and that gave airline the name Maybe Airlines)! Of course whole company was running on government subsides and tax that was collected from every passenger departing Sarajevo Airport (10 euros per departing passenger)!? European Union is needed here more than any other place in Europe: to help us to speed up reforms,  get rid of corrupt politicians who are cancer of this country, incorporate European business practices, laws and much, much more...... 

Wizz Air was interested to start flights from Banja Luka:

Davorin Mihic, director of the Banja Luka Airport, said the airport would not have financial benefits in the event of an agreement with WizzAir. "They were very difficult about paying services while we negotiated with them, so that we have absolutely no financial benefit from them. Our citizens, possibly, would benefit from new flights as people would get an opportunity to fly at low cost, but we as an airport would yield no profits,” Mihic said back in 2013.

Source: FlyingBosnian and BHDCA