At Maribor Airport, passenger flights have been rather uneven for many years. Apart from individual charter flights, not a single line route has been able to hold its own for more than a decade, even though there have been various approaches with completely different approaches.

It was a long time ago: Ryanair flew from Graz to London-Stansted. The management of the Styrian airport was put under pressure with flights from Maribor, because the Irish lowcoster relocated some of the offer to the Slovenian city. The success? Not available, because Ryanair quickly withdrew from Maribor due to a lack of demand. The Graz flights were discontinued at a later point in time, but that had completely different reasons, which are more to be found in the business conduct of the low-cost airline.

For a short time there were even flights between Maribor and Graz, because Styrian Spirit "extended" a route to the Slovenian city. The success was almost zero and the end of the regional airline is known: It disappeared from the scene in the direction of the bankruptcy judge.

It was a long time ago, but Adria Airways was once successful from Maribor and was able to persuade many passengers from Austria to fly from Slovenia. The tickets were significantly cheaper than from Graz with Tyrolean and Austrian Airlines. However, changes in the market meant that demand from Maribor gradually collapsed. Again and again Adria Airways tried to build on the old times and set up routes from Maribor. The success was not there and even a free shuttle bus from Graz to the Slovenian airport could not change the tricky situation.

With Chinese investors who even wanted to develop Maribor into a hub for tourists from the People's Republic of China, everything should then be better. There were no more than a few Fokker 50 flights to Munich. The construct that had also used the VLM brand collapsed and some high-ranking officials in Slovenia had to resign because the lease fee for the airport was not paid.

Slovenia prevents the recovery of subsidies

To cut a long story short: Establishing scheduled flights from Maribor has not even been managed by Ryanair so far. However, the airport has an excellent reputation in the field of pilot training and is occasionally used for training flights with passenger aircraft. But it is precisely the excursions towards the establishment of passenger flights that are causing trouble again in Maribor.

Specifically, it concerns subsidies that were granted around 2012 for the modernization of the terminal. The airport has just missed the fact that ten million euros, which were then granted for a new terminal, have to be repaid. As part of the financing agreement, the EU has requested that there be no major changes to the airport by November 11, 2021. Despite the minimum volume of air traffic and the changes in management, the Ministry of Infrastructure sees the airport continue to operate and the country has thus avoided repaying EUR 10,54 million in EU funds.

Due to the expulsion of the Chinese investors, whose intermezzo can be classified as “nothing but expenses”, Maribor Airport is operated by the state-owned DRI. However, this is only a temporary solution because the government wants to find a new operator for this airport. The interest remains within very narrow limits, so that it can be assumed that the state will renew the lease, which expires at the end of this month. A new attempt can be expected at a later point in time.