Wizz Air Carries 63.8% of Skopje Airport's Passengers: A Record Year Hanging on One Airline

Macedonia's airports are on track for a record year. In the first nine months of 2026, Skopje and Ohrid handled 3,331,685 passengers, 29 percent more than in January-September last year, according to TAV Macedonia data. The number of flights reached 22,147, up 10 percent. For comparison, the two airports handled 3,475,288 passengers in the whole of 2025 - so in nine months they have already hit about 96 percent of last year's total.

Skopje International Airport handled 3,065,692 passengers, up 29.07 percent, and Ohrid's "St. Apostle Paul" handled 265,993, up 26.76 percent. According to Airports Council International Europe (ACI Europe), Macedonia was the second-fastest-growing aviation market in Europe in August.

The record has a name

Behind the numbers stands one airline. Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air flew 63.8 percent of Skopje airport's passengers. In second place is Pegasus Airlines with 9.4 percent, then Turkish Airlines with 4.6, AJet with 3.5 and Austrian Airlines with 3.4 percent. In Ohrid the dominance is even greater - Wizz Air has 70 percent of passengers, while the runner-up, Chair Airlines, has 8.7.

Part of the growth comes precisely from extra capacity: in July the airline stationed a seventh aircraft at its Skopje base. This year, routes to Naples, Budapest, Palermo, Alghero, Trabzon and Samsun were opened or restored from Skopje, along with Milan, Vienna, Wrocław and Katowice from Ohrid.

The busiest destination from Skopje is Istanbul, with 13.5 percent of traffic, followed by Basel-Mulhouse, Munich, Dortmund and Zurich. From Ohrid, the most flights go to Bratislava, Basel, Dortmund, Memmingen and Zurich.

"We expect this positive trend of impressive double-digit growth in air traffic to continue," says TAV Macedonia's general manager, Necat Kurt.

The records are real. But when almost two in three passengers in Skopje and seven in ten in Ohrid fly Wizz Air, the entire aviation boom depends on the business decisions of a single company. What's left of the records if one day it decides to move its planes to another airport in the region?