Passengers from Ljubljana airport will be able to fly to 26 destinations on scheduled flights this summer season, which starts on 30 March, according to airport operator Fraport Slovenija. The flights will be operated by 24 airlines.

New carriers joining this season are KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and German budget carrier Eurowings.

KLM will fly daily to Amsterdam, while Eurowings, which is part of Lufthansa, will fly to Düsseldorf, a German business hub, three times a week from mid-April.

More flights to Amsterdam, Istanbul, London

Also flying to Amsterdam will be Transavia, with both KLM and Transavia flying to Schiphol airport, an important European hub for regional and intercontinental flights.

This will bring the number of weekly flights from the Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport to Amsterdam to eleven.

Turkish Airlines will meanwhile increase the frequency of flights to Istanbul; starting from June, it will fly there 18 times a week.

British Airways will also upgrade its link to Ljubljana airport, flying eight times a week to London's Heathrow from June.

The summer timetable will also see Spanish Iberia fly to Madrid, Aegean Airlines to Athens, Transavia France to Orly airport in Paris, Finnair to Helsinki and Air Montenegro to Tivat.

This means that 24 carriers will operate 27 routes to 26 airports in the season that ends at the end of October.

Passenger numbers going up

Fraport Slovenija says that passenger traffic at Ljubljana airport is recovering as expected, reaching 92% of pre-Covid levels in 2024.

The airport saw 1.4 million passengers last year, 13.3% more than in 2023.

Routes to Istanbul, Frankfurt, Zurich, Brussels, Warsaw, Belgrade and Skopje have already surpassed the pre-pandemic levels, while routes to Paris and Munich are nearing there.

The airport lost its status as a Balkan hub in 2019, as direct connections to Western capitals were introduced in the markets in the region.

In 2019, transfer connections to airports in the former Yugoslavia accounted for 200,000 passengers.

The most frequent destinations from Ljubljana last year were Istanbul, London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Paris, Munich, Belgrade, Brussels, Dubai, Skopje, Warsaw and Amsterdam.