Fischer Air, a Czech airline that operated between 1996 and 2005, has been relaunched. Its new base is in Bratislava (Slovakia) rather than Prague, and flights are scheduled to start in April.
Named after a Czech businessman and politician, Václav Fischer, the airline went bust in 2005. There were previous attempts at relaunching it but none had come to fruition until now.
Mallorca is one of the destinations for the revived airline; Ibiza is another. As well as Bratislava, there will be flights from two airports in Czechia - Ceské Budejovice and Karlovy Vary.
The revival of Fischer will naturally be a boost to Mallorca's tourism from Czechia and Slovakia. While neither market is exactly large, they both come under the umbrella - for Balearic statistical reasons - of the rest of Europe. To end November 2023, rest of Europe accounted for 1.53 million of the total 17.6 million tourists who came to the Balearics over the first eleven months of last year.
The three per cent growth of rest of Europe was indicative of the development of diverse tourism markets. This diversification helps to explain why tourist numbers increased so significantly in 2023. While figures for the 'big two' - UK and Germany - were more or less identical to what they had been in pre-pandemic 2019, other markets supplied the one million-plus more tourists than in the previous record year of 2018.