Flycheapo reports today that Ryanair will fly between Frankfurt Hahn and Osijek, in the Eastern Croatian region of Slavonia, from May on. Thus far, low-cost carriers have focused within Croatia almost exclusively on coastal cities and Zagreb. The choice of Osijek is interesting for at least two reasons. First off, Osijek is not currently a huge tourism draw, though it has enjoyed a steady stream of tourists in the past. Another score for that old Ryanair strategy of flying to little-known corners of Europe. The move is also interesting given the fact that route expansions involving airports previously outside of the airline's network have been rare for Ryanair over the last year or so. Is this the start of a counterintuitive recession era expansion strategy into heretofore unserved airports throughout Central and Eastern Europe? Probably not, but we can dream.
It's also occurred to me that there may be a new labor migration stream of Croatians in and around Osijek into Germany. Croatians can count on visa-free access to EU countries, after all. Anyone?
Croatia isn't slated to join the EU until 2010 and its citizens likely won't have full labor mobility for 5-10 years after that.
A quick look at the map suggests this is a potential gateway to northern Serbia (even Belgrad), northern BiH, southern Hungary and even western Romania. I have no idea what rail/land connections from Osijek look like, however.
I sure wish Berlin and not Hahn had all the interesting flights ...
Posted by: poetloverrebelspy | March 01, 2009 at 21:00