Wizz Air, the largest low-cost airline in Central and Eastern Europe by seat capacity, is to further expand its activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the opening of a new base at Tuzla International Airport from summer 2015. The carrier is currently the sole scheduled operator at the facility, which serves the country’s third largest city.
The budget airline will station a single Airbus A320 in Tuzla in June 2015 to open four new routes to Munich Memmingen and Oslo Torp, from June 26, 2015, and Frankfurt Hahn and Stockholm Skavsta from June 28, 2015. The addition of these services will grow its total network from Tuzla to nine destinations in five countries.
"This is another major step forward for Wizz Air in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We started our operations in Tuzla in May 2013 and already carried over 180,000 passengers to date. The new Tuzla base will create a number of local jobs with Wizz Air and our local business partners,” said György Abrán, chief commercial officer, Wizz Air.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is becoming our 11th country where we have established base operations. We look forward to becoming the airline of choice of Bosnian consumers and visitors," he added.
Tuzla is an educational centre and home to two universities. It is also the main industrial machine and one of the leading economic strongholds of Bosnia with a wide and varied industrial sector including an expanding service sector thanks to tourism to its salt lakes. The city of Tuzla is actually home to Europe's only salt lake within its central park which has more than 100,000 people visiting its shores every year.
When Wizz Air arrived in Tuzla in May last year it established the first regular flights from the city in more than three years following a seasonal programme from JA to Frankfurt, Istanbul and SJJ in winter 2009/2010. It initially introduced flights from Malmo in May 2013, adding Euroairport Mulhouse to its network in June 2013, Gothenburg City in October 2013 and Dortmund and Eindhoven in July 2014.
In our analysis, below, we look at annual international air capacity from Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past ten years. The data shows the emergence of the country’s air transport business with international air capacity rising 123.7 per cent over the past ten years from 286,000 departure seats in 2005 to over 640,000 this year. Wizz Air is already the country's second largest international carrier by capacity after Turkish Airlines with its share of international seats increasing from 5.6 per cent in 2013 to 14.2 per cent in 2014.
Data provided by 
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