Blue Air announces 12 routes from Cluj-Napoca for 2021

Blue Air will begin 12 routes from Cluj-Napoca, Blue Air’s fourth-largest Romanian airport in 2019.

Blue Air has revealed 12 routes from Romania’s Cluj-Napoca, all coming in summer 2021.  They’ll have 27 weekly departures between them.

Five of these – Barcelona, Larnaca, Luton, Madrid, and Milan Bergamo – will have direct competition with Wizz Air.

A further five routes – Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Paris CDG, and Rome Fiumicino – will have indirect competition with the ULCC.

Read now: Cluj was Wizz Air’s third most profitable airport in the year to March 2020.

Blue Air’s remaining two routes – Hamburg and Stuttgart – will have no non-stop competition, OAG data reveals.

Amsterdam, Brussels, and Stuttgart are new from Cluj.  And CDG almost is too, except for exceptionally brief Tarom service in 2018.

Cluj – Amsterdam will join Blue Air’s Bucharest – Schiphol, which started on 9 October.

With 297,000 seats in 2019, Cluj was Blue Air’s fourth-largest in Romania after Bucharest, Bacau, and Iasi.

Blue Air targets Cluj’s top unserved markets by traffic

Paris CDG, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, and Brussels were Cluj’s top-four unserved European O&Ds in 2019. This is according to booking data via OAG Traffic Analyser.

CDG had unstimulated passenger traffic of 10,200, Amsterdam 9,500, Stuttgart 7,900, and Brussels 6,500. 

Hamburg – also coming – was Cluj’s sixth-largest unserved market, with 5,500.

Düsseldorf was Cluj’s fifth-largest. However, with Blue Air starting Cologne – which was operated by Wizz Air between 2014 and 2019 – alongside an existing four-weekly Wizz Air service to Dortmund, Düsseldorf won’t materialise in the foreseeable future.

Blue Air is reintroducing four routes:

• Hamburg was operated between June and September 2017
• Larnaca until January 2018
• Luton between 2017 and 2018
• Rome Fiumicino in 2010, 2011, and 2013

Interestingly, Cluj will become Blue Air’s only destination served from CDG.  The rest – Bacau, Bucharest, and Iasi – are all from Beauvais.

Blue Air’s total seats grew by 58% between 2016 and 2018, and by 180% between 2015 and 2018.  However, they then fell by one-quarter in 2019 from significant across-the-board cuts.

Three of Blue Air’s coming routes from Cluj-Napoca – Brussels, Hamburg, and Stuttgart – will have no non-stop competition, directly or indirectly. Source: OAG Mapper.