On March 11, 2023, Mostar Airport issued a “Notice of Public Call for the Selection of the Most Favorable Bidder for the Establishment of a Regular Mostar-Zagreb-Mostar air service” on its website:
“We inform all airlines that a public call for regular international scheduled air transport services on the route Mostar-Zagreb-Mostar has been published. Detailed documentation can be downloaded from J.P. International Airport – aerodrome Mostar d.o.o. by sending a request signed by an authorized person of the potential bidder for download by e-mail to the e-mail address info@mostar-airport.ba. The deadline for receiving offers is 21 March 2023 until 10:00 a.m..”
Speaking to the media, the mayor of Mostar, Mario Kordić, explains that the goal is to connect Mostar via Zagreb with European cities and airline hubs. For the portal Klix.ba he emphasized:
“While researching the market for departures from Zagreb, we estimated that it should be Friday, Wednesday and Monday, and that is how we defined it in the Public Call. If an interested airline comes forward, and we expect that they will, that would specifically mean that you would leave Mostar at 6 a.m. for Zagreb, where you arrive at 7 a.m. Then between 7:30 a.m. and noon, which is an acceptable waiting time in Zagreb, you catch all connecting flights such as, for example, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona. If we are lucky enough to be contacted by one of the national airlines, it would mean that we are connected to all the major airports. In thinking about the low-cost airlines, we saw that they mostly fly to smaller airports that are often not even close to the destinations where we want to go. Of course, it is an advantage to have cheap tickets, but you will arrive at an airport that is a hundred kilometers away from the first, more serious destination you would like to fly to”.
Croatia Airlines maintained the year-round Zagreb-Mostar route (2 flights per week) using the PSO (Public Service Obligation) program from May 2018 until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
