INTERVIEW – Bosnia’s Tuzla Airport To Host Flights to Istanbul; Eyes Vienna, Scandinavia Next Year

“We started servicing our first regular line, Tuzla-Frankfurt, with BH Airlines in June 2009 and at the same time we received a permanent licence for daytime visual landing,” Enver Jukanovic told SeeNews in a telephone interview.

The airport located in Tuzla, in central Bosnia, once was the largest military airbase in ex-Yugoslavia. Following the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia it was put under the control of international military forces, who were responsible for its flight control, security and infrastructure maintenance until November 2006. It received a licence to service civil aviation flights in June 2008 following a two-year closure.

“We had a limited number of air operations last year, mainly of business and medical nature, and serviced no regular lines as we held a licence to operate only visual flights in daytime,” Jukanovic said. The airport was cleared for servicing night flights in clear weather in November 2008.

This year the airport installed an instrument landing system (ILS), which uses radio signals and high-intensity lightning arrays to guide an aircraft to safe landing in reduced visibility caused by fog, rain or snow. Jukanovic said the ILS will be fully functional as of November 19.

The Tuzla airport will service two regular lines in the winter season – to Frankfurt on Mondays and Wednesdays, and to Istanbul on Sundays and Tuesdays. Both lines will be operated by BH Airlines, the air carrier of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation, which is 49%-owned by Turkish Airlines.

The Federation and the Serb Republic form post-war Bosnia. The Serb Republic airline company, Sky Srpska, is the successor of the Republic’s Air Srpska carrier which was grounded in 2004.

“We mainly promote ourselves as an alternative to the surrounding airports – in Sarajevo, Zagreb and Belgrade. It is difficult to estimate what passenger numbers and aircraft traffic will be in the winter months, it will depend on the climatic conditions,” Jukanovic said.

Tuzla is located some 100 kilometres north from Bosnia's capital Sarajevo, around 150 kilometres from Serbia’s Belgrade and 250 kilometres from Croatia’s Zagreb. It is 50 minutes drive from the Zagreb-Belgrade motorway located to the north of the town.

The airport has a railway connection to the Adriatic port of Ploce in southern Croatia, thus offering a multimodal way of cargo transport.

“In the winter period we will intensify talks with all other interested companies about the coming summer season, both low-cost and national airlines,” Jukanovic said.

The Tuzla airport is in talks with Ryanair and Wizzair, which used to operate charter flights to and from it before 2006. The airport also is in negotiations with Turkish Airlines, considering there is a significant potential in passenger traffic from Turkey.

“In the winter we will be unable to introduce a third regular line for sure,” Jukanovic said.

The airport plans to start servicing BH Airlines regular flights to Vienna and the Scandinavian countries next year. The Tuzla Airport (www.tuzla-airport.ba) is owned by the government of the Tuzla canton, part of Bosnia’s Federation.

Jukanovic said the canton and the Federation have made a combined investment of some 2.0 million marka ($1.5 million/1.0 million euro) in various flight control systems to prepare the reopening of the airport.

“We still need to invest a lot in buying new facilities,” Jukanovic said but added all investment plans are uncertain due to the financial crisis.

(1 euro=1.95583 marka)