Dubrovnik Airport will end 2018 with more than 2.54 million passengers travelling through it, which is 9.5 percent up from last year, the airport's CEO Frano Luetic said on Friday.
Luetic said in a news conference that this year Dubrovnik Airport expected 2018 revenue to total 415.3 million kuna (€56.2 million), or 16.3 percent up from 2017, with net profit after tax to remain unchanged from last year at 72 million kuna (€9.7 million).
“This was a challenging and turbulent year for us, but we still managed to meet our target to increase traffic by some 10 percent. We always had double digit growth over the years, and this year’s figures still put us above the global average, which makes us proud,” Luetic said.
As part of the €225 million development project co-financed by €158 million of EU funding, a new passenger terminal was built this year, and works on reconstruction of its runway continued, and are expected to be completed by March 2019.
In 2019, the airport expects to see even more passenger traffic, especially on announced summer routes connecting the city to cities in western and central Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
However, the biggest event for the airport is the arrival of the world’s largest airline, American Airlines.
“For the first time in 28 years, Croatia and the United States will be connected through a direct airline route, with American Airlines flying return flights from Philadelphia to Dubrovnik, three times per week, served by Boeing 767s from June to late September next year,” Luetic said.
Low-cost airline FlyDubai announced it would continue operating seasonal flights from Dubai to Dubrovnik in 2019, and Europe’s largest low-cost carrier Ryanair also announced four flights a week served from Dublin.
The announcements mean that throughout 2019 Dubrovnik Airport will be served by close to 70 airlines.
(€1 = 7.39 kuna)
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