Ryanair has denied reports which surfaced in some local media that it is reducing frequencies across its Zagreb network and other destinations across the former Yugoslavia this winter season. The airline is maintaining its largest regional winter timetable and has not made any changes on its initial schedule, which was finalised as early as September. It follows on from reports the carrier will reduce frequencies from its Zagreb base, as well as Podgorica, Banja Luka and Niš over the first quarter of 2024. The airline highlighted that due to its policy not to maintain any flights on Christmas Day, on December 25, as well as limited operations on December 24, it schedules additional frequencies on select routes within the following week to compensate for the flights that were not operated due to the holiday, after which services return to normal, which may have caused confusion as to why frequencies on certain routes vary between the last few days of the year, and the first few days of the new year compared to the rest of the winter season.
This winter season, Ryanair is operating 55 weekly flights out of Zagreb, nine weekly out of Podgorica, eight weekly out of Banja Luka and four weekly rotations from Niš. This excludes the first week of January when select flights have been added to make up for the reduced schedule during in the last few days of December. “Ryanair is the only major European airline to significantly grow traffic post-Covid, particularly in the Balkans, where other airlines have stopped growing, are cutting routes, and reducing traffic. We want to focus very much on this region. We see that this is going to be a large part of our upcoming expansion”, the airline said.
