The news was published in the region that Tuzla International Airport and the Tuzla Canton (TC) are talking to a “mysterious company” with whom it negotiated in Zagreb. The company has never flown from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and Tuzla emphasizes that it is a serious company.
Portals from BiH announced that Tuzla is negotiating with Trade Air. The CEO of Trade Air, Mr. Marko Cvijin, confirmed in an interview that the talks are ongoing and that Tuzla is very interested.
Cvijin clearly said in the negotiations that Trade Air has no interest in starting these flights and will not deal with regular flights or sales. Trade Air wants to lease an Airbus A320 to Tuzla, but Tuzla has to set up the routes itself, organize sales and take the risk of the business.
Tuzla never operated a company, and had no organized ticket sales, especially not via the Internet.
If Tuzla enters this business, it must become not only the operator of the airport, but also take over all operations, organization of routes, negotiations with airports, and organization of ticket sales. Trade Air will organize flights and provide crews, aircraft, insurance, and aircraft service.
In addition to the question of whether Tuzla has the staff, knowledge, and capabilities for something like this, there is also the question of whether Tuzla has the money for such an undertaking. Trade Air operates 18 weekly flights in summer and 16 weekly flights in winter, which are short flights of one hour or less for 6 million euros, with a Saab 340 plane that is six times smaller.
Therefore, flights with a six times larger A320 on flights twice as long can only be significantly more than that. It should be recalled that Trade Air charged Air Montenegro 2.800 euros per flight hour, i.e. it paid 3.8 million euros for 1.600 flight hours. This year, Trade Air charged a 30% or more higher price. This means that Tuzla cannot pay less than 5 million euros for 1.600 flight hours. To that should be added money for workers who will carry out sales and operations, as well as operating costs. So this deal cannot realistically be closed below 6 million euros. Does Tuzla have that money, or will it rent Trade Air for significantly fewer flights than the daily capacity?
Finally, is the A320 a good plane for Tuzla? It is very big. Tuzla was trained on the A320 from Wizz Air, but let’s be realistic. Wizz Air is an established LCC. Tuzla cannot dream of conducting operations in the same way, even less with so many passengers and such a high occupancy rate. Tuzla Airport is not Wizz Air and this plane is much too big for them.
Tuzla discussed the same with Marko Anzur, CEO of Air Montenegro. Air Montenegro certainly has a smaller plane, the Embraer 195, with which the risk of flights is lower, and the cost of operations would be significantly lower. But Air Montenegro needs more than one plane to cover its operations. Last year, Air Montenegro leased a plane to Air Serbia, but only for half a day. It could do the same in Tuzla. Of course, then there remains the issue of ferry flights to Tuzla every day, which further increases the cost of operations.
It would certainly be much simpler for Tuzla to find a company that could fly flights for them, and subsidize it, and let’s hope, for the same amount that Wizz Air subsidized. They are not an operator, they do not know how to operate regular routes, and that adventure could cost them an enormous amount of money and create huge losses, and it would by no means accumulate a satisfactory number of passengers. Tuzla does not need that. Airports are not good operators, they should not deal with this, Biznis Info reports.
E.Dz.
