Dubai is Ljubljana Airport’s busiest unserved market, both in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Based on OAG data, in 2019, 3.762 passengers flew indirectly between the two cities. This does not count Slovenian travellers who reached the UAE’s largest city via alternative nearby airports, particularly Zagreb, and those that began or ended their journey in Ljubljana by transferring through Dubai. Emirates will codeshare on Flydubai’s service, enabling passengers to easily connect onto its vast network out of the Gulf hub, which will generate a significant portion of traffic on the route. In 2019, Istanbul was overwhelmingly used as the transfer airport to reach the Emirate with 74% of travellers opting to fly via the Turkish city. Accordingly, Turkish Airlines was the busiest feeder airline. It was followed by Adria Airways with a 9% share and Aeroflot which transferred 8% of all passengers.
During the pre-pandemic 2019, some 19.483 travellers flew between Ljubljana and the Middle East as origin and destination passengers. Turkish Airlines was the dominant carrier on the Ljubljana – Middle East market, responsible for carrying a whopping 71% of all passengers between the two. It was followed by Air Serbia, which in…