“It is our national obligation to operate local flights. Our main clients on these routes are politicians and businesspeople,” says Christian Heinzmann, general manager of Tarom.
In the first six months, the state-run airline carried only 250,000 passengers on local routes.
“Around 40-50% of local flight ticket prices is given by airport and handling taxes, which increases tariffs per passenger,” says the head of Tarom. Asked by ZF whether these flights are profitable, he said it “depended on destination”.
Flights Tarom operates in Romania include Bucharest-Sibiu, Bucharest-Cluj, Bucharest-Timisoara, Bucharest-Oradea and others, with tariffs (starting from RON500-600 return ticket) being similar with those of tickets for Rome or Vienna.
Along traffic categories, regular external flights posted a 12% increase, while regular local flights registered a 10% decline.
The local flight market, which could have a huge potential considering Romania’s poor road and rail infrastructure, has also attracted airlines Fly Romania, Blue Air and Carpatair.
The latest failure on this market is the one of Fly Romania, which asked for insolvency around three months after launching the first flights. The first flights, launched this May, were canceled less than a month later on the very low loading factor.
Carpatair also operated local flights until going insolvent early this year. Blue Air tried to operate on this market several years ago, but has no local flights left currently. On August 10, 2010, the company cancelled the flights from Arad, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara to Bucharest on the low demand for these destinations and several days later announced its complete exit from this market.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)