In December, Tuzla Airport had 17,899 passengers. This is significantly less than in the same month of the previous year (50,848 passengers), which is a direct result of the termination of Wizz Air and Ryanair flights due to the closure of their bases.

However, what is concerning is that Tuzla had only 17,899 passengers in December, even though Lumiwings has been operating flights to Tuzla since the middle of the month, as reported by Zamaaero.

Even with just 2,558 more passengers (15,341 in November 2023), the airport should have seen an increase without Lumiwings, considering the higher number of passengers around the New Year. Tuzla has historically had 2,000 to 9,000 more passengers in December compared to November.

This suggests that the occupancy of Lumiwings flights is very low, as noted by Zamaaero, despite the airport's claims of excellent sales. Let's be realistic – tickets were put on sale too late, after travelers had already organized their journeys home for New Year's. Lumiwings is relatively unknown, and the airports it serves are not even secondary but truly tertiary.

Changing passenger habits, access to information, and time are required for such developments. Therefore, one should not expect any positive figures from Tuzla in the next few months, despite Lumiwings' flights.

Tuzla had only 44.0% of the passengers it had in the same month in 2019 (40,688). The airport had 158 operations (compared to 366 in December 2022) and handled 5.7 tons of cargo (compared to 1.9 tons in December 2022).

In total for 2023, Tuzla had 582,798 passengers (compared to 466,596 in 2022), which is fewer passengers than in 2019, representing 98.3% of the 2019 passenger count (593,050). In 2023, the airport had 4,008 operations and handled 14.9 tons of cargo.

*The text was translated by artificial intelligence