The scale of Ryanair’s expansion in Zagreb cannot be overstated. Up until June 2021, the Irish airline had never operated a single scheduled Ryanair flight to Zagreb. Less than a year later, Ryanair’s route network has a staggering 27 routes from Croatia’s capital city. Let’s take a look at these 27 routes one by one.

This article is part of a series exploring the impact of Ryanair’s arrival in Zagreb.

27 new routes launched in just 12 months

Ryanair arrived in Zagreb after the airport launched a comprehensive program of incentives for airlines launching new routes. The routes were launched in the following order:

  • 2nd June: Brussels Charleroi (CRL) to Zagreb
  • 17th June: Milan Bergamo (BGY) to Zagreb
  • 23rd July: Zagreb to London Stansted (STN)
  • 23rd July: Zagreb to Gothenburg (GOT)
  • 23rd July: Zagreb to Rome Ciampino (CIA) (now swapped to Fiumicino FCO)
  • 3rd August: Zagreb to Sofia (SOF)
  • 2nd September: Zagreb to Oslo Torp (Sandefjord) (TRF)
  • 2nd September: Zagreb to Karlsruhe / Baden Baden (FKB)
  • 2nd September: Zagreb to Paris Beauvais (BVA)
  • 3rd September: Zagreb to Frankfurt Hahn (HHN)
  • 3rd September: Zagreb to Memmingen (FMM)
  • 3rd September: Zagreb to Dortmund (DTM)
  • 4th September: Zagreb to Düsseldorf Weeze (NRN)
  • 4th September: Zagreb to Podgorica (TGD)
  • 4th September: Zagreb to Malmö (MMX)
  • 1st December: Zagreb to Malaga (AGP)
  • 2nd December: Zagreb to Manchester (MAN)
  • 2nd December: Zagreb to Dublin (DUB)
  • 2nd December: Zagreb to Thessaloniki (SKG)
  • 3rd December: Zagreb to Paphos (PFO)
  • 3rd December: Zagreb to Eindhoven (EIN)
  • 3rd December: Zagreb to Basel (Mulhouse-Freiburg) (BSL)
  • 4th December: Zagreb to Malta (MLA)
  • 17th December: Zagreb to Naples (NAP)
  • 27th March: Bratislava (BTS) to Zagreb
  • 27th March: Zagreb to Brindisi (BDS) as a replacement for Zagreb to Lviv (LWO)
  • 4th June: Zagreb to Corfu (CFU)
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Ryanair's base in Zagreb is a Lauda Europe base. Photo: Getty Images.

Zagreb – London Stansted

Ryanair’s most frequent route out of Zagreb is London Stansted, where the airline flies daily.

Conversely, Croatia Airlines flies to London’s Heathrow Airport, where airport fees are much higher and the turnaround time for the aircraft is higher too. Furthermore, Croatia Airlines’ cheapest fares to London were as high as 140 euros one-way up until Ryanair’s arrival. These have now been dropped significantly, all the way down to 70 euros, but that is still much higher than what Ryanair can offer.

Back in 2017, Croatia Airlines sold almost all of its slots at Heathrow. It now only has four slots left, and it uses three of these for Zagreb flights and one for flights to Split (SPU).

However, the airline’s remaining Heathrow slots are so late in the day during the IATA summer timetable that the aircraft does not arrive in Zagreb until after 23:00 on two out of the three days of operation. This means that Croatia Airlines cannot offer any transfers through Zagreb for anyone arriving from Heathrow on these flights because Croatia Airlines’ regional evening flights depart Zagreb between 21:00 and 22:30.

Thus, as a result of Ryanair’s arrival, Croatia Airlines was forced to drop fares and cut capacity from the A320 to an A319 on its flights to Heathrow. Meanwhile, British Airways has also cut its flight schedule to Zagreb, dropping its London Heathrow to Zagreb route from January to March and operating a severely reduced timetable from October to December.

Zagreb – Rome Fiumicino

Croatia Airlines has been operating flights from Zagreb to Rome Fiumicino for almost three decades, but always with a stop in either Split or Dubrovnik.

This makes the Croatian flag carrier instantly uncompetitive against Ryanair, which is now flying four weekly flights between Zagreb and Rome that are direct and also operated by an Airbus A320 as opposed to the less spacious Dash 8 aircraft that Croatia Airlines uses.

Croatia Airlines dropped its fares on Zagreb – Rome flights instantly after Ryanair started flying the route, and you can now buy a cheaper ticket with Croatia Airlines for the routing Zagreb – Split – Rome than you can for Split – Rome flights. Still, this has not been enough to stop passengers from swapping over to Ryanair. Ryanair even boosted the seat capacity on this route by 33% by adding an extra rotation.

Croatia Airlines still flies on the route as frequently as it used to before Ryanair’s arrival, aided by a codeshare partnership with ITA and thanks to strong demand on the Split – Rome sector.

Croatia Airlines Airbus Fleet Zagreb Airport
Photo: Croatia Airlines

Zagreb – Brussels Charleroi

Croatia Airlines flies to Brussels International (BRU) from Zagreb, while Ryanair launched flights to Brussels’ Charleroi Airport (CRL). In this sense, Ryanair cannot compete with the convenience offered by Croatia Airlines because Charleroi is much further away from the city center of Brussels than BRU is.

Furthermore, Croatia Airlines benefits from highly inelastic demand between Brussels and Zagreb. Croatia is both an EU member state and a NATO member, meaning that the route is seeing plenty of demand from government officials whose tickets are paid for by their governments.

Still, Ryanair offers a compelling alternative for more price-sensitive customers, and it has dented Croatia Airlines' demand. Both the capacity and the frequency are below pre-pandemic levels.

Zagreb – Sofia and Zagreb – Podgorica

Croatia Airlines originally scheduled the launch of flights to Sofia (SOF) and Podgorica (TGD) for summer 2020. These routes were supposed to constitute Croatia Airlines’ regional expansion that should have boosted its feeder network to Western Europe.

However, due to the pandemic, Croatia Airlines postponed the launch of these two routes. Ryanair spotted an opportunity and captured the market during the height of the pandemic, while Croatia Airlines was reluctant to launch new routes.

Zagreb – Milan Bergamo and Zagreb – Oslo Torp Sandefjord

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Croatia Airlines used to operate seasonal flights to Milan Malpensa (MXP) and to Oslo International (OSL).

Both of these routes were temporarily discontinued in 2020. However, the temporary discontinuation has now become permanent because it looks like Croatia Airlines will never resume flying to these airports from Zagreb. This is all because of Ryanair.

The Irish airline launched flights to Milan Bergamo (BGY) and to Oslo Torp (Sandefjord) (TRF), both with aggressively low fares and with a high-frequency schedule. In this way, Ryanair is engaging in a limit pricing strategy to hinder Croatia Airlines from re-entering the market.

The strategy succeeded: Croatia Airlines has still not put tickets on sale for either Zagreb – Milan or Zagreb – Oslo, but it is actually launching Split – Milan flights this summer instead.

Ryanair aircraft
Ryanair has announced the return of some flight services to Zagreb Photo: Getty Images

Zagreb – Dublin

Zagreb – Dublin is a different route from the other 26 because it is the only route for which Ryanair was not eligible to receive any incentives. Simple Flying analyzed this route in detail last week in the first article of this three-part series.

Zagreb – Paris Beauvais, Zagreb – Brussels Charleroi, Zagreb – Memmingen, Zagreb – Frankfurt Hahn, Zagreb – Bratislava, Zagreb – Eindhoven

This set of flights is Ryanair’s way of competing with Croatia Airlines by offering flights to the same city pairs but different airport pairs. This allows Ryanair to qualify for Zagreb Airport’s incentives while also capturing a share of the market currently served by Croatia Airlines and its partner airlines.

We covered these routes in the second article of this three-part series.

Zagreb – Malmö and Zagreb – Basel

From the routes above, Malmö and Basel are particularly interesting destinations for Ryanair to launch from Zagreb. Neither Malmö nor Basel are classic Ryanair destinations.

Apart from Zagreb, Ryanair flies to only one other destination from each of these two airports - Dublin (DUB) for Basel and Stockholm Arlanda (ARN) for Malmö.

Zagreb – Dortmund, Zagreb – Düsseldorf Weeze

On these two routes, Ryanair is targetting the wider catchment area in North-West Germany. Croatia Airlines does not fly there, but Eurowings does: Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary flies from Zagreb to Cologne (CGN) and Dusseldorf (DUS).

Ryanair has successfully applied pressure on Eurowings which was forced to suspend flights from Zagreb to Dusseldorf for almost all of the winter timetable, while capacity to Cologne was drastically cut.

Zagreb – Naples, Zagreb – Malaga, Zagreb – Paphos, Zagreb – Manchester, Zagreb – Gothenburg, Zagreb – Malta, Zagreb – Brindisi, Zagreb – Thessaloniki, Zagreb – Corfu

This set of routes is completely different from the others, and it constitutes a wholly different segment of Ryanair's route network out of Zagreb.

These routes are leisure routes (particularly Malaga) and visiting friends and relatives routes (particularly Manchester), and Ryanair is not competing with any other airline in Zagreb flying to airports in the vicinity of these destinations. The routes are particularly popular with passengers from Slovenia, as Ljubljana does not have scheduled leisure routes.

By serving these destinations, Ryanair is demonstrating that it is willing to enter all segments of the Zagreb market.