The rising number of passengers on domestic flights again failed to enhance competition on this segment this year, in the context where TAROM holds a 75% market share on the domestic flight segment, reads BUSINESS Magazin.
Two months ago, Hungary's Wizz Air announced it intends to give up its first flight in Romania (Bucharest-Cluj) during the 2008-2009 winter, after less than a year of operations. In fact, the company wants to consider whether to reopen the flight in summer 2009, according to company official Natasa Kazmer.
Wizz Air's decision could be because of two major factors: the insufficient coverage of four weekly flights and the use of an aircraft that is too big for domestic flights. These causes are strengthened by the fact that the flight is halted during the winter period, even though the highest market demand for flights is in winter.
Blue Air, another low-cost carrier that tried and started to operate domestic flights cannot develop this service for the time being, because its aircraft are also too big for the domestic flights.
Gheorghe Racaru, general manager of Blue Air, says that a company wanting to enter the domestic flight segment would have to make a major investment to acquire a fleet of small planes that fly at least twice a day between two destinations and attract an occupancy rate of at least 75%.
He says there is no other way, for now, that a company could enter the domestic flight market with 800,000 passengers. The Timisoara-headquartered Carpatair operates several domestic and regional flights, but brings passengers to its hub in Timisoara, not Bucharest. Until recently, the company operates domestic flights to Timisoara only from Bucharest, Constanta, Craiova, Suceava and Iasi, but with the new flights from Bacau, Cluj, Sibiu, Oradea and Satu Mare, Carpatair will double its number of domestic flights. Carpatair would have a market share of around 20-25%.
The market share that is left is still held by the national carrier. In the first six months of 2008 TAROM carried almost 250,000 passengers domestically, compared with 160,000 a year ago.
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