Belgrade Nikola Teslawith strong winter schedule

The winter season at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport in Serbia begins on Sunday October 26, 2008 and will last 5 months until March 28, 2009. The airport is expecting a growth of 10% in air traffic when compared to last year, despite a few airlines ending certain services including the airport’s biggest user – Jat Airways. Although Jat will end its flights to Gothenburg, Munich, Prague, Tripoli and Malta it will increase frequencies to regional destinations – flights to Podgorica will operate 3 times a day while to Tivat twice daily. Flights to Skopje will be operated on a daily basis, Dusseldorf with 5 flights per week, Trieste 4 times weekly while Milan is newly introduced with 3 flights per week and Thessaloniki will feature in the winter schedule for the first time (twice a week). As a result Jat will operate 161 return flights weekly which is roughly the same as last year.

After Jat, Lufthansa and Montenegro Airlines will operate the largest amount of flights from Nikola Tesla Airport. Lufthansa will operate 3 daily flights to Munich and 2 daily flights to Frankfurt (although it will end services from Dusseldorf which will be taken over by Jat with 5 weekly flights). The Montenegrin national carrier will operate the identical amount of frequencies from Tivat and Podgorica as Jat. Alitalia will operate daily flights to Rome and Milan while Swiss will operate twice weekly flights to Basel (on top of its flights to Zurich). The airline will increase its capacity by upgrading its equipment to an Airbus A321. Meanwhile ČSA will operate daily flights to Prague and Turkish Airlines will increase from 3 to 5 weekly flights from Istanbul.

The airport expects it will have around 865.000 passengers in the 5 winter season months which would see an increase of 5% compared to that period last year when the airport had 824.000 passengers. In total the airport is poised to have more than 2.5 million passengers by December 31, 2008.