As of June 20, 2011 booming Hungarian airline Wizzair will become the first low cost carrier to fly to the Macedonian capital, running three flights a week from the utilitarian low cost Mecca of London Luton. Wizz CEO, Josef Varadi, told Utrinski Vesnik newspaper that they're also considering runs between Skopje and Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona.

With fares starting at £26.99 (31.95 euros) and construction underway on another terminal at Skopje Alexander the Great Airport, as well as renovations at Ohrid's St. Paul the Apostle Airport, the often overlooked Balkan nation is set to explode onto tourist itineraries.

Skopje Alexander the Great, run by Turkish operator TAV Airport Holdings since the long, slow death of MAT Macedonian Airlines which was banned from airports for millions of euros of unpaid fees and finally spasm into bankruptcy last January, has had its runway extended by 500 metres to deal with long-haul flights – making the airport bigger than both Belgrade Nikola Tesla and Sofia. With the improvements completed by October 2011, TAV hopes the to turn Skopje into a hub for returning members of the Turkish expat community and entice Turkish Airlines into setting up a base there.

Alp Er Tunga Ersoy, the Deputy Manager of TAV in Macedonia, told Southeast European Times, "Our goal is to make Skopje a popular regional hub by using its advantageous geographical location. Thanks to this investment, Macedonia will have state of the art airport facilities and Skopje's Alexander the Great Airport will be one of the main drivers of economic growth in the region.”

Critics remain, er, critical, but whatever the end result, it certainly bodes well for regular travellers to Southeast Europe - at least until TAV goes bankrupt as well.