United Airlines have been welcomed back to the far south of Croatia as direct flights between New York and Dubrovnik restart in 2022. The popular American airline has reported that interest for this route, the only direct connection with Croatia and the US, is high and that for the first United Airlines flight to Dubrovnik, which landed on yesterday, that the business section of the plane was sold out.

United Airlines will operate flights between New York/Newark and Dubrovnik until the 28th of September this year.

Last year United Airlines reported success on the route to Dubrovnik, and handled just over 17,000 passengers, according to Ex-Yu Aviation, which was a load factor of almost 78 percent. However, whereas United faced competition from Delta Air Lines last year, along with the travel restrictions due to the global pandemic, this year they have a monopoly on the route as Delta have pulled out.

United’s Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Nocella, has said the Dubrovnik flights were launched in response to Croatia maintaining open borders to American citizens and residents throughout the coronavirus pandemic, and has performed strongly as a result. “We started in a few new markets in Europe last year. In fact, we loaded those for sale very late. And those new markets were actually some of our top performing city fares, because Croatia and Greece in particular, made it clear to the world that they were open for business. And in fact, our customers responded to it immediately, and our new flights degrees did incredibly well”, Mr Nocella said to Ex-Yu Aviation.