The South Tyrolean airline Skyalps has officially opened its new base at Mostar Airport in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The airline will initially rely on a wet-lease partner for flight operations, the company confirmed. The Greek airline Marathon Airlines will provide Skyalps with two Embraer aircraft. One Embraer E195 will be permanently stationed in Mostar, while a smaller Embraer E175 will follow later in Innsbruck.
From the new base in Mostar, Skyalps will operate Embraer regional jets on routes to Milan-Bergamo, Palermo, Naples, Rome-Fiumicino, Bari, and Munich. Skyalps' own Dash 8-Q400 will also be used on selected routes in Mostar. However, neither an Embraer from Marathon Airlines nor a Dash 8 from Skyalps was in operation at the time the base opened. Instead, a CRJ900 from Global Reach Aviation served flights to Palermo and Milan-Bergamo. Skyalps is currently increasingly relying on leased Dash 8s from Luxembourg-based Luxwing in Mostar, as a large portion of its own fleet is unavailable due to maintenance issues.
The exact plans for the stationing of an Embraer E175 in Innsbruck are not yet known, but Marathon Airlines confirmed that another aircraft will be stationed there during the current summer schedule. Skyalps currently plans to fully reactivate its entire fleet in June, following some downtime for necessary maintenance in recent weeks. The opening of the base in Mostar with the support of wet-lease partners underscores Skyalps' commitment to expanding its route network, even though its own fleet is currently operating at a limited capacity.