Regular airlines Tarom and British Airways and low-cost operators Blue Air, Wizz Air and easyJet are operating flights to London, which is the European destination with the highest competition among airlines in Romania, according to a ZF analysis. Competition on the route will increase in April, when Ryanair starts offering flights, as well.
The higher number of companies offering flights to London makes it easier for passengers to find tickets at less than EUR100 compared with Bucharest-Lisbon route, where airfare is upwards of EUR200 because only two companies operate such flights.
On Monday for instance, eight planes left for London from Bucharest, six left for Vienna, five for Rome, and Munich and four for Paris. The number of flights varies with the day of the week, so the number of weekly flights is a more accurate indicator.
Valentin Iordache, the spokesman for the Henri Coanda (Otopeni) Airport in Bucharest, says the airport data show 48 weekly flights to Vienna, 41 to Paris, 40 to London and 39 to Munich.
“Those are both tourist and business trip destinations, as well as hubs, hence the demand. Whereas ten or twelve years ago we were happy to have five flights a week, we now find two flights a day too little. The destination countries with most flights are Spain and Italy, while to UK we only have flights to London.”
Out of the almost 800 takeoffs a week from the country’s largest airport to destinations abroad, a quarter are bound for Vienna, Paris, London, Munich and Rome, the ZF analysis shows.
The balance of power on the local airline market keeps changing because of the expansion strategies of foreign operators, aggressively grabbing a slice of the market. Airlines try to fill the seats in their aircraft by offering attractive fare and by standing out through their flight schedule.
Competitors on the Bucharest-Vienna route are Tarom and Austrian Airlines, the latter offering several flights a day.
Competition is higher on the Bucharest-Paris route: Tarom, Air France and low-cost airlines Wizz Air and Blue Air.
Lufthansa and Tarom offer flights to Munich. Tarom, Wizz Air, Blue Air and Alitalia compete over the Bucharest-Rome route.
Low-cost airline Wizz Air beat Tarom to the top spot by passenger number in 2012. Whereas Tarom carried 2.19 million people that year, Wizz Air carried 2.8 million, and the data of the company show more than 3 million people chose to travel with it last year.
Blue Air ranks third among airlines, having carried some 1.5 million people.
Another important player is the Lufthansa group, which includes Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Swiss, which carried 1.3 million passengers in Romania in 2012. The group’s market share amounted to 26%, its officials said. Lufthansa alone carries 770,000 people to and from Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Duesseldorf, according to the latest data available.
Air France-KLM group is the most important operator on the Bucharest-Paris and Bucharest-Amsterdam routes. It carried 5% more passengers on direct flights from Bucharest to Paris and Bucharest to Amsterdam in the first nine months of last year compared with the same time in 2012, with a load factor of 85% and 90%.
In 1998, about 1.6 million passengers transited the Otopeni Airport. Last year traffic exceeded 7 million people, according to the Bucharest Airports National Company, which operates it. A number of 33 airlines are currently operating off the Otopeni Airport, offering flights to 67 destinations.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)