Abstract
The paper presents the passenger and cargo historical traffic data analysis at the Zagreb Airport, at certain airports in the wider region and globally for a period of half a century. The war during 1990s and the disintegration of Yugoslavia had as a consequence the breakdown of air transport based on hub and spoke system with three airports as a hub: Zagreb, Belgrade and Ljubljana. During and after the war, the domestic airliner in the region and a foreign airliner implemented primarily point-to-point system. Hub airports have become origin-destination airports with mainly local passengers and insignificant ratio of transfer and transit passengers. The causes of slow passenger and cargo traffic growth at the Zagreb Airport and of passengers at certain airports in the narrow region have been analysed and the results are lower growth of air traffic at capital airports of the new countries and greater air traffic growth on the capital airports and others in the countries of a wide region comparing with the global passenger transport growth. The paper indicates the possible measures to increase the share of transfer passengers and cargo traffic at the Zagreb Airport and certain airports in the immediate region.
Highlights
Air transport has been growing significantly after World War II
It can be summarized that important reasons for slow growth of passenger traffic at Zagreb Airport was caused by: –– the death of President Tito in 1980 and the political crisis in Yugoslavia during 1990s which culminated in the war starting in 1991 and closing of Zagreb Airport and other airports in Croatia and Slovenia; –– the loss of transfer and transit passengers in Zagreb Airport of ex-domicile air carriers who lost their air rights (JAT and Adria aviopromet (AA)) in Croatia, and –– the decision of the flag carrier Croatia Airlines (CA) to perform the point-to-point flying concept which excluded Zagreb as the hub airport on a substantial number of lines
When Croatia gained independence Zagreb Airport became the airport of the capital city of the country, domicile airport of the flag carrier Croatia Airlines (CA) and the main airbase of the Croatian Air Forces
Summary
Air transport has been growing significantly after World War II. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has taken the statistics of the world total revenue traffic on airlines scheduled services of ICAO member states, passengers and cargo. Out of 1.133 billion international tourists in the world in 2014 about 612 million travelled by plane [3] which means in both directions about 1.2 billion passengers and at airports in the world about 2.4 billion passengers. Along with international tourists as passengers in air transport there are domestic tourists, who multiply outnumber the international ones (depending on WTO source 5 to 10 billion a year) [3] but who use air transport to a much lesser extent. In 1980 the cargo transport by air recorded about 10 million tonnes, and in 2014 about 50 million tonnes [2]; that is, at airports in the world in that year about 100 million tonnes of cargo were handled. The concept of flying was primarily point-to-point The consequence of this flying concept of the domicile carrier to Zagreb Airport was the loss of transfer passengers. The majority of passengers in 2014 were local which means that Zagreb Airport became the origin-destination airport
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