Insider info about airline plans for SZZ?
 

SZZ has pretty much no conventional (as opposed to low-cost) connections except for two flights daily to WAW. There used to be a connection with CPH via SAS a long time ago but I believe the interest was negligible.

Does anyone have any insider info about this airport and the possibility of establishing a daily connection to hubs like CPH, FRA, MUC, DUS, AMS, etc.? SAS seems to have some success with many other Polish regional airports like POZ, WRO or GDN so maybe them or some other airline will make a decision to fly there?

SAS flies to WRO??? Hmmm... I though only LH and LO were the only traditional carriers there. I think with the LCC competition, and it's proximity to Berlin, SZZ will stay as is. In fact, there is a shuttle bus company that transports customers between Stettin and the Berlin airports. I've seen it often at SXF.

SAS has been flying to WRO from CPH for about 2-3 years... soon to be joined by the "traditional" Etihad Regional from Berlin. :)

As for SZZ, passenger numbers are quite low (350k) compared to WRO (almost 2m) and POZ (1.5m). Plus the proximity to Berlin, as already mentioned, and even Poznan, means it will always have much more difficulty in attracting routes. The population of the region is also quite low, only some 1.6m, and quite low density as well. To top it all of there's even a bit of competition from nearby at Heringsdorf, which has seasonal service to Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Zurich, and a few others.

The time and distance to Warsaw (SZZ is the furthest airport you can fly to within Poland from WAW) and probably some political pressure keep that connection intact. Any new traditional entrants would try stronger markets first. I think the best SZZ could hope for is for LOT to increase the number of flights to WAW.

Your predictions are sound although not what I would like to hear. I would hope to see at least one traditional carrier besides LO at least give it a try - LH or maybe SAS.

Actually SAS could be a good competition to LCC for flights to Stockholm (there is some of traffic between SZZ and ARN) but ARN is not much of a hub.

There are several bus companies that do it - probably even more than 10: Interglobus, Berlinia, Berlineks, EuroSBS, PKS, etc. You can catch a bus from TXL or SXF to Szczecin every few minutes but the journey lasts about 3 hours. However, there are hourly train connections between Berlin and Szczecin and the trains are cheap and much more comfortable than buses and the fare is a lot cheaper - 4 to 10 euros each way. The journey lasts only 2:10 to 2:40 hours, depending on the airport and connection.

This only means that there is a lot of traffic between Szczecin and TXL. A recent study showed that about 600k people from Szczecin used TXL in 2012. I think this number will be closer to 800k this year which is twice more than what the traffic at SZZ is. If some traditional carrier could capture only 1/6th of this traffic (say 100k) this would mean about 300 people shuttled per day which is about 4 regional flights per day. I am only trying to show that there are people who DO use airline transportation there but are forced to use TXL or SXF.

There used to be pretty good connections with flights out of WAW about 10-20 years ago but this collapsed with LO joining *A and Lufthansa intercepting a great chunk of intercontinental trip sales from Polish customers that used to prefer their national carrier before.

What?! AB is starting TXL-WRO service?! That was on my wishlist. That 6 hour train ride between Berlin and Breslau is torture. Is it going to be flown with a Q400? So now AB will fly to WAW, GDN, KRK, and WRO. Poland is such a Star monopoly. I'm so glad that OW is growing there. Now Sky Team needs to add service to AMS and CDG from other than WAW. And since LOT's financials aren't that great, I seriously doubt that any intra-Poland flights will be added anytime soon.

Recently spoken with Lufthansa officials regarding expansion plans - regarding SZZ they say there's not enough feed potential as most of people tend to use TXL and they're not planning to launch SZZ in the near future.

@Fanjet: WRO/POZ-TXL will be operated by Etihad Regional (ex-Darwin) on Saab 2000.

How is Etihad (non EU) able to have a regional service out of Berlin? Where is it flagged? Germany? Is AB at least putting its code on these flights? And is the Saab 2000 the same as a Saab 340?

Saab 2000 is 50-seater, and much more quiet than S340. Darwin is registered in Switzerland and so Etihad Regional will be. They'll feed ZRH and Etihad's new ZRH-AUH route as well as TXL and AB operations there. On all network there should be full EY/AB cs aviailibility.

Thank you very much. This is really important news!

OK, 2 years passed and nothing really happened except for LOT announcing an additional daily SZZ-WAW flight starting in 03.16. I would expect that another major carrier finally starts service in competition with LOT because most other international airports already have it (KRK, GDN, KTW, WRO, POZ, RZE, and even BZG, LCJ, LUZ and soon to be opened SZY!). BZG, LCJ, and LUZ are quite a bit smaller than SZZ yet they already enjoy connections from LH or Adria (LH codeshare).

Meanwhile SZZ is bustling with LCC traffic. Which major airline is finally going to appear there?

There could be several reasons why SZZ does not appeal to any major carrier (apart from LO operating feed flights to WAW), not to mention that the logics behind airlines' strategies when it comes to launching new routes or operating from X instead of Y are far more complicated than we (passengers) think. The fact that there's already a significant number of flights operated by low-cost carriers does represent a big minus and probably a reason itself for carriers such as LH or SK not to start services to their respective hubs. LH, in particular, has a remarkable network to/from the Polish regions and I'm relatively sure that, had they seen any potential in SZZ, they would have certainly done something about it, like they recently did in BZG.

G

Hm, I can see that for SK LCC traffic may be a big minus (especially that a lot of it is to Norway) but, like you mentioned, LH has a truly remarkable feeder network in Poland. It is better than that of LO! It must be something that we, travellers, don't know which prevents establishing a feed connection to either FRA or MUC. It might slimply be the proximity of Berlin airports but airline officials mentioned many times that it isn't just that, and that the relative "quietness" of the airport plays a significant role here. I thought that the LCC traffic will mitigate that but you say that is not the way to go. By the way, RLG (Rostock), another airport in the area with an even larger catchment territory also struggles (big time) so there must be something about the region there that makes establishing these routes difficult. Few business clients maybe?

I thought Rostock has service on LH to MUC. As well as 4U to DUS. No? Perhaps when BER eventually opens up and TXL closes, SZZ will gain service on LH, as it is further away from Stettin. And if they're going to start service to Szczytno (SZY) when it opens up next year (which I'm still trying to understand myself), that's gotta give you some hope.

When you say proximity then you'd normally imply that the above mentioned airports are easily reachable from SZZ's catchment area, which is not an entirely accurate statement: I know there are bus services from the main train station and that you can also get to the German Capital in less than 3 hours by train (with a couple of changes, but fine), however I still think that the extensive choice offered by low-cost carriers and perhaps the lack of premium traffic is perhaps preventing big players such as LH from opening services to their respective hubs.

G

Can anybody post a link where this (i.e. LH operating from SZY) is actually mentioned? I can't find anything on the web and, likewise, I haven't heard anything in Poland.

G