Prague’s Václav Havel Airport saw 13.8 passengers depart last year. At the beginning of last year, the airport estimated about 12.5 million passengers for 2023, exceeding that forecast by more than 1.3 million. Prague Airport announced today.
Last year, 167 destinations were flown from Prague Airport to 69 carriers. The airport also offered more than 30 new or renewed routes last year. Traffic in Czech airspace increased by 13 per cent year-on-year, the Czech Air Traffic Control (ATC) said in a press release. It reached 73 percent compared to the pre-Christmas year 2019.
In the record year of 2019, flights to 190 destinations were operated, according to Prague Airport Chairman Jiří Pose. Last year, the airport managed to renew several routes or launch new ones, for example, Korean Air returned to Seoul, South Korea, and China Airlines started flying to Taiwan from Prague, he said. “Another undeniable shift for us is the long-haul charter flights of LOT Polish Airlines and World2Fly, which offer direct flights to exotic holiday destinations such as the Dominican Republic, Thailand and Sri Lanka,” he said.
Flights to Agadir in Morocco with Eurowings, to Bilbao in Spain with Vueling, to Dubrovnik in Croatia with Croatia Airlines and to the East Midlands in the UK with Ryanair and Jet2.com have also been added to the schedule. Ryanair has also added new routes to Gdansk in Poland, Rimini in Italy, Seville in Spain and the Greek island of Skiathos. In addition to new routes to Taiwan with China Airlines, Icelandair offered flights to Keflavik, while World2Fly offered charter flights to Vietnam, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
The most popular destinations last year were the UK, Italy, Spain, Turkey and France. Direct flights between Prague and London were the most frequent, with 1.1 million passengers. Paris followed with almost 700,000 passengers and Milan came third with 545,000 passengers. Some 538,000 passengers went to Amsterdam and a total of 440,000 went to Istanbul. Smartwings, Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet and Eurowings carried the most passengers last year.
This year, Ruzyně Airport plans to handle 15.5 million passengers and include more than 170 destinations in its offer. Currently, the airport has confirmed eight new destinations. In March, Eurowings will start flying to Tallinn, Estonia, and Volotea to Florence and Verona, Italy. In April, Ryanair will add connections to Poznan and Smartwings to Ponta Delgada in Portugal. Smartwings will add a new route to Brindisi, Italy in June. June will also see the addition of a route to Izmir, Turkey, with SunExpress, and passengers will travel to Chisinau, Moldova, with FlyOne.
The airport also plans to increase frequencies on more than 30 routes. These include KLM and its route to Amsterdam, Wizz Air and its route to Catania in Sicily, Ryanair and Marseille in France. Passengers are also looking more frequently at Baku with Azerbaijan Airlines and Madrid with Iberia.
