B H Airlines pictures

The airline’s first 737-400 – “Istanbul” – comes from Turkish Airlines which bought a 49% share of B&H Airlines last year.

Good luck Regina! anna.aero wishes Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entry at this weekend’s 54th Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow all the best with their song Bistra Voda.

B&H Airlines, the national airline of Bosnia & Herzegovina, recently took delivery of its first 737-400. Since the end of 2008 Turkish Airlines has owned a 49% share of the airline and the new addition to the B&H Airlines fleet has come from them. The rest of the fleet consists of two ATR 72-200s. With the arrival of the 737 several new “longer-haul” destinations will be launched from Sarajevo in the near future.

Destination	Start date	Days of operation
Copenhagen	11 May 09	Monday, Thursday
Gothenburg	13 May 09	Wednesday, Saturday
Stockholm Arlanda	16 May 09	Saturday
Vienna	18 May 09	Daily (except Saturday, Sunday)
Berlin Tegel	19 May 09	Tuesday, Saturday
Dűsseldorf	19 May 09	Tuesday, Saturday
Prague	25 May 09	Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday
Source: Airline website booking tool

The three Scandinavian routes and Dűsseldorf will use the new 737 while the ATRs will be used on the remaining services.

Apart from routes from its base at Sarajevo, B&H Airlines also operates scheduled flights between Banja Luka and Zurich, and Mostar and Istanbul.

Sarajevo now handles over half a million passengers

Last year Sarajevo Airport handled just over half a million passengers a small increase on 2005. B&H Airlines carried around 70,000 passengers and faced competition from a variety of carriers including Adria Airways (double-daily flights to Ljubljana), Austrian (double-daily flights to Vienna), Croatia Airlines (double-daily flights to Zagreb), JAT (daily flights to Belgrade), Lufthansa (double-daily flights to Munich), Malév (daily flights to Budapest) and Turkish Airlines (daily flights to Istanbul).

In addition, two LCCs (Germanwings and Norwegian) offer low-frequency connections to Cologne/Bonn, Oslo Rygge, Stockholm Arlanda and Stuttgart. There are currently no direct scheduled services to anywhere in France, Spain or the United Kingdom.

Up until now over 80% of Sarajevo’s traffic has been generated by airlines originating from somewhere other than Bosnia & Herzegovina.