Benchmarking of Airports from Central and Eastern Europe Sorin Eugen ZAHARIA, Ph.D University professor. University Politehnica of Bucharest, President of Romanian Association for Knowledge Transfer INAIR – Amsterdam, november 2015

Outline Target group of analyze The economical context Operational activities Quality of community airline service

1. Target group of analyze

The top 20 airports from the airport connectivity criteria, from the following countries: EU countries: Bulgaria (3) Croatia (3) Czech Republic (1) Hungary (1) Poland (6) Romania (4) Non EU countries: Moldova (1) Serbia (1)

The average of passenger per airport by country

2. The economical context

The GDP’s evolution in Eastern and Central Europe GDP – millions euro

National traffic 2004 - 2013

The airport connectivity for East and Central European Countries - 2015

The airport connectivity by country Rate of increase (growth)

Intercontinental connectivity - 2014 Compared with…. The international connectivity represents from total direct connectivity: Serbia* 7.14% ( Etihad), Poland 3.03% (4 continents), Hungary 2.86% (2 continents), Czech Republic 2.46% ( 4 continents), Romania* 1.55% , Bulgaria *1.27%, Moldova* 1.2%, Croatia* 0,6% *) only with Middle East

3. Operational activities

Passenger traffic for top 10 airports for the period 2004 - 2014

Connectivity and passenger traffic for capitals

Traffic evolution on other regional airports, positions 11 to 20

Connectivity and passenger traffic for top 12 regional airport, capitals excepted 3 2 5 1 4

Air companies on airports of capitals

Low cost companies the main actor in the increasing traffic Low cost companies vs legacy companies: Cluj Napoca: LCC 2, destinatiions 19 LC 3, destinatiions 6 Wroclaw : LCC 3, destinatiions 29 (Ryanair 21) LC 3, destinatiions 4 Krakow : LCC 6, destinations 45 (Ryanair 29) LC 9 , destinations 11 Sibiu : LCC 2, destinations 3 LC 3, destinations 3 Katowice LCC 3, destinations 32 (26 – WizzAir) LC 2, destinations 2 The most important evolutions between 2004 – 2014 in terms of passenger traffic are those of the following airports : Cluj Napoca 564% Wroclaw 486 % Krakow 353 % Sibiu 341 % Katowice 332%

1. In the last 10 years it has been a very important increasing of traffic and connectivity in East Europe. The aviation sustains economic growth. 2. The increase of traffic in the region is mainly due to low cost airlines Ryanair and Wizz Air which are extremely serious competitors for legacy companies operating mostly on short and medium haul segments. 3. It is necessary to concentrate the development airport investments according to the economic potential of the region, the foreign investor’s interest in that region and the existing infrastructure of the airports; exemples: Bourgas and Varna from Bulgaria and Cluj Napoca from Romania.

4. The airport connectivity is very sensitive to the evolution of dominant companies. The case of Budapest and Timisoara airports: the disappearing of the two dominant companies Malev, respectively, Carpatair led to a significant decrease in connectivity; In the case of Budapest, the effects begin to disappear: it recorded an increase in total connectivity by 10% and by11% in direct connectivity and concerning the passenger traffic by 7.5% in 2014 vs 2013. 5. One of the priorities of East and Central European countries could be the improvement of intercontinental connectivity. 6. Bucharest there is the opportunity of becoming a more important hub taking into consideration the geographical position and the affiliation of TAROM to the Sky Team Alliance.

Thank you for your attention! sorin.zaharia@gmail.com