Belgrade - Turkey air travel closes in on million passengers annually

Air Serbia, Turkish Airlines, AJet and Pegasus Airlines handled a record 880.768 passengers on flights between Belgrade and Turkey last year. The figure, up 3% on the year before, includes data across six different routes, including charters in 2024. It was achieved, in part, due to renegotiated terms of the restrictive Bilateral Air Service Agreement between the two countries in late 2022, which enabled Air Serbia to launch several new routes to Turkey, as well as AJet’s expansion onto the Serbian market. Furthermore, it ushered closer cooperation between the two flag carriers.

Belgrade - Turkey passenger performance by route, 2024

Flights between Belgrade and Istanbul’s main gateway were the busiest with over 470.000 passengers. The figure was down 6.5% year-on-year, primarily due to Air Serbia reducing frequencies on the route, which resulted in a 10% overall capacity drop. On the other hand, the Belgrade – Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen route added an extra 62.504 passengers, with operators AJet and Pegasus Airlines registering a combined annual average cabin load factor of 91.2%. Growth followed AJet’s entry on the route in December 2023. Antalya remains the busiest charter-only destination from Belgrade, with Air Serbia, its exclusive operator, handling close to 120.000 passengers during the route’s five-and-a-half-month of operations.

In addition to its Belgrade operations, Air Serbia maintains flights from Niš and Kraljevo to Istanbul, and charters between Niš and Antalya. The Serbian carrier handled 19.076 passengers between Niš and Istanbul last year. The route, subsidized under a Public Service Obligation (PSO) agreement with the Serbian government, recorded an average annual load factor of 63.1%. In 2024, a total of 232.527 Turkish tourists visited Serbia, an increase of 15.4% on 2023, making them the largest group of visitors to the country.

In January 2025, Serbia and Turkey inked a Memorandum of Understanding in Air Transport. The agreement paves the way for more flights, the addition of new destinations and increased capacity between the two countries. The Turkish Ambassador to Serbia has since announced that new flights would be introduced between the two countries this year. “Every week, there are around 66 flights between our two countries, and soon there will be even more. New flights from Niš to Istanbul and Ankara, as well as from Kraljevo to Istanbul, will be introduced shortly. Demand for charter flights is growing every year, so we expect this trend to continue this year”, Ambassador Ilhan Saygılı, said.