Split Airport has seen passenger numbers increasing drastically over the past few years, just last week the airport handled its two millionth passenger. In fact Split is close to catching the capital, Zagreb, as Croatia’s busiest airport. This July the airport was the busiest in the country handling over 657,000 passengers, which is over double the amount of passengers that travelled through Dubrovnik Airport.

Although according to a report in the specialised website EX-YU Aviation the airport still has a problem with seasonality. "Almost half of our annual traffic is achieved during July and August. Last year that amounted to some one million passengers," commented the General Manager, Luksa Novak. He predicts that the airport will welcome around 2.7 million passengers in 2017.

But neither Split Airport nor Dubrovnik Airport see any future, at least for the time being, with the most popular low-cost airline in the world, Ryanair. Commenting for EX-YU Aviation Novak said that “In Croatia, Ryanair still operate exclusively from airports which provide support for their flights. We have held meetings with them and established contacts, however, for now, they will not come to Split as we have not changed our policy. Neither Split, nor Dubrovnik, need to stimulate carriers during the season as traffic continues to grow. That would only create a mess on the market. We are always open for talks, but we do not intend on changing our business policy."

At the end of last year the General manager of Dubrovnik Airport, Roko Tolic, had a similar point of view when he commented that the conditions that the Irish airline had demanded to land at Dubrovnik Airport were “unacceptable.”