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.

For the penniless flyer, the map of Europe might as well have a big swirling space void where Serbia is – direct flights from the UK are few, and most indirect flights involve either Alitalia or Lufthansa. Trains can be problematic thanks to inconvenient mountains and the wheezing spectre of yesterday's politics, but a modest wind of change is blowing, one that'll potentially invite the Serbian capital into the warm, lager-sozzled embrace of the budget airline community.

Hungarian-based regional powerhouse Wizz Air started flying between London Luton and Belgrade twice a week last summer, but as of 2011 there's a pretty good chance that not only will their fares go down, but more carriers will start making the run as Belgrade Nikola Tesla airport lowers its service charges by 7% and expands its capacity in keeping with its epic 15% boost in passenger numbers in 2010 – no doubt the most air traffic they've seen since 1999 filled the sky with shrapnel. Though fares ultimately rest in the cold, damp hands of the airlines themselves, one estimate is that it could reduce ticket prices by a saliva-worthy 100 euros, pretty exciting stuff when Wizz's cheapest existing flight from London Luton is a reasonable £156 (including blahdiblah).

Belgrade has long been making noises about wanting to echo the tourist boom of its Westerly neighbours, and in 2011 it just might – provided of course airlines are prepared to pass their substantial savings onto their customers.