Croatia Online - Croatia Airlines Minimises Flight Disruption

Full marks to Croatia Airlines for being one of the few to get their passengers to and from Heathrow after the security alert last Thursday. The Heathrow flight was due to arrive at Split, via Zagreb, at 15:40 and eventually arrived at 12.30 am the following morning. However passengers were exceptionally lucky, given that most other airlines cancelled their flights and the inbound plane did not leave Zagreb, for Heathrow, until the middle of the afternoon. Apparently the information service was good and the connecting plane waited for passengers at Zagreb.

Don’t be put off if you have to travel via Zagreb to London (Heathrow), as long as you’re travelling on one of the days when the wait time is less than 2 hours. Before the low cost airlines and British Airways started the Split route, it was a regular occurrence for us, particularly outside the summer season. Zagreb is a cosy airport and, apart from having to queue for the Split boarding card, as you arrive in Zagreb heading to London, (you get both boarding cards going the other way), it’s relatively hassle free with luggage going straight through. It’s for you to decide whether the extra couple of hours journey time, less if Heathrow is closer to you than Gatwick, is worth the saving.

Re reading recent postings, readers may imagine that we are on the marketing payroll of Croatia Airlines! That’s not the case and, selfishly, we’d prefer to keep some of this information to ourselves. It’s just that after so many years of having a monopoly on most of the Croatian routes, and having been a little slow to adjust tactics and prices to the opening up of the Croatian skies, Croatia Airlines are now very competitive and have always had high standards of safety and service. They seem to be allowing themselves to be overlooked at the moment, in favour of the more aggressive marketing campaigns of the newcomers to Croatia, and it seems only right to give them credit when it is due.