TIRANA, March 12 – Italian destinations offered by Italian-owned carriers dominate flights to and from Tirana International Airport, Albania’s sole international airport and one of the country’s key passenger hubs.
The situation is a result of half a million Albanian migrants living and working in Italy and close trade and investment ties with the neighboring country across the Adriatic, the Eurozone’s third largest economy.
Albanian migrants in Italy regularly travel to Albania during their vacations, especially in summer, while visa-free visits by their family and friends are almost year-round.
TIA, which in October 2016, was taken over by a Chinese consortium, handled 2.6 million passengers in 2017, an 18 percent increase compared to a year ago.
Flights to Italian destinations such as Rome and Milan accounted for 57 percent of Albania’s air transport market last year, with Italian-owned Blue Panorama and Alitalia having a combined total market share of 40 percent, according to airport data cited by Monitor magazine. The figure is almost the same compared to previous years with Italy continuing to dominate more than half of Albania’s air transport market.
Albawings, the sole Albanian-owned carrier serving Italian destinations, increased its market share to 8 percent in 2017, up from a mere 2 percent in 2016 when it launched its operations.
Former Albanian-owned Belle Air carrier had a market share of more than 50 percent in 2013 before it went bankrupt.
Austrian Airlines and Turkish Airlines linking Tirana to Vienna and Istanbul each had a 7 percent market share in 2017.
The British Airway served about 85,000 passengers in 2017 with a market share of 3 percent while Air Serbia handled some 47,000 passengers last year, a record high since resuming direct Tirana-Belgrade flights in late 2014.
Some 17 airlines linked Albania to 31 European destinations dominated by the Italian airports of Rome, Milan, Bergamo, Pizza and Verona. The airport also offers direct flights to major European destinations with most passengers flying to and from Istanbul, Vienna, Athens, London, Belgrade, Budapest, Amsterdam and Munich.
Last year, low cost carriers launched direct flights linking Tirana to Budapest and Amsterdam. New low flights are set to link Tirana to London starting spring 2018.
The Albanian government is holding negotiations with a Turkish consortium to build a new international airport in Vlora, southern Albania, in a bid to give a boost to the local tourism industry and reduce current ticket prices, among the region’s highest.
The airport’s proposed location at a protected site has come under fire by environmentalists while the International Monetary Fund has warned the country’s authorities to draw lessons from the 20-year concession contract it signed with the TIA concessionaire back in 2005.
“Many Albanians travel by bus to airports in Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia, and the relatively high costs of flights to Albania may also have affected inbound tourism,” says the IMF, attributing the low number of low-cost carriers to the airport’s high landing fees.
The Tirana International Airport, which until mid-2016 enjoyed exclusive rights on international flights says it supports “any initiative that aims to stimulate the economic development of the country, including the establishing of airports that enable a freer movement of Albanian citizens, as well as foreigners wishing to visit Albania.”
Air transport represented the second most important mode of international passenger transport in 2017 after road transport linking Albania to neighboring Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro.
Albania’s main port of Durres handled about 880,000 passengers to and from Italian ports in 2017, a 5 percent increase compared to 2016, according to Albania’s Institute of Transport.
Meanwhile, the Saranda and Vlora ports linking Albania to Greek and Italian ports handled a combined total of 627,000 passengers.
Albania’s rail transport is almost coming to an end with passengers choosing to travel by train hitting a historic low of only about 66,000 in 2017 as no major investment has been made in decades.
