B&H plans to return to Belgrade after two year absence
B&H Airlines plans to launch flights to Belgrade from December 2 in cooperation with Air Serbia. The Bosnian national carrier will initially operate four weekly flights from Sarajevo to the Serbian capital before increasing the service to daily next summer. The flights, which will operate with an early morning departure, replace Jat Airways’ morning service from Sarajevo. As a result, passengers will be able to transfer onto Air Serbia’s Western European departures. The Serbian carrier will place its own code on B&H Airlines’ flights. The Bosnian carrier will continue to code share on Air Serbia’s Sarajevo service which will operate every day in the afternoon starting October 27. The flights are also code shared by Etihad Airways.
Ticket sales for the new flights will begin once all necessary permits are obtained, which is when the carrier will also issue an official press release. B&H Airlines recently held talks with Air Serbia where it was agreed for the airline to resume the service to Belgrade after almost two years. This winter season B&H Airlines will maintain flights to Istanbul, Copenhagen, Zurich and Banja Luka with Belgrade being its latest addition.
Next summer, Sarajevo and Belgrade will be better connected than ever since the collapse of Yugoslavia. In addition to B&H Airlines’ daily flights, Air Serbia will introduce a second daily service between the two capitals. It also plans to boost capacity this winter, upgrading from the existing ATR72 to a Boeing 737 in December and moving up to the Airbus A319 in March. B&H becomes the fifth new scheduled airline to launch flights to the Serbian capital this year, joining Pegasus Airlines, easyJet, Etihad Airways and Belaiva.
Meanwhile, Air Serbia will present its new staff uniforms and open its branded sales office in Belgrade later today. You can follow the news on the dedicated launch page here. Tomorrow, the airline will finally reveal its on board product at a special media event. Live coverage will be provided by EX-YU Aviation News starting at 09.00 CEST.
Amadeus currently shows that in summer, Air Serbia will operate two daily flights between Belgrade and Sarajevo.
ReplyDeleteJU 116 00.20 - 01.05 // 05.25 - 06.05
JU 112 14.20 - 15.05 // 15.45 - 16.25
With B&H Airlines' new schedule being:
06.00 - 06.45 // 07.45 - 08.30
I guess we will see Air Serbia replace its JU 116 flight with an afternoon one? Maybe around 18.00 or..? It would make no sense for them to have two morning flights unless for JU it is important to have the night departure from Belgrade.
Or B&H moves to an overnight Belgrade connection. Feeds at least Cyprus and Moscow flights..
DeleteFrom Summer 14, JU plans double daily ATR so no 319..
Well, if they end up having an overnight flight to Belgrade then they could feed not only Moscow and Larnaca but also flights to Varna, Cairo, Beirut and Athens (I don't know if I forgot some other routes).
DeleteYour version might be actually the best. Air Serbia would arrive early in the morning from Sarajevo while B&H Airlines would depart with the morning wave of departures.
Air Serbia will probably not fly to Cairo.
DeleteAnd why is that?
DeleteFor an airline with only two planes, allowing their crew to stay overnight away from the base seems improbable... It would be rather difficult to ofset the higher costs associated.
DeleteWell, not necessarily. If their cooperation proves to be a successful one then it means that healthy loads and yields will justify the aircraft spending the night in Belgrade.
DeleteLet's not forget that Air Serbia owns some parking spots at the airport which means that B&H can save on overnight parking costs at Belgrade Airport.
By spending the night in Belgrade and having an early morning departure, B&H Airlines can also attract O&D passengers who are heading for one day to Sarajevo on business.
Let the feeding beging.
ReplyDeleteAfter this I want BH Airlines to go bust another day. Such a horrible move that disconnects patient from breathing support machine.
DeleteBH Airlines killed every hope of becoming serious company by letting THY take all of its passengers through IST and now feeding Air Serbia with remaining ones...
Sad, stupid and expected story
Do you really believe B&H Airlines stands a chance to be an independent player? I don't think so.
DeleteThey needed to find a larger partner and Etihad/Air Serbia is the best fit. Not to mention that they will have more route which will certainly bring them a lot of passengers due to the codeshare agreement.
No, of course not! That would be typical Balkanic idiotically patriotic opinion and not opinion from somebody who is aviation specialist.
DeleteMy point is that B&H cant make foundations for future based on feeding to other companies. I strongly support cooperation as long as its fair in both directions.
B&H should firstly make a proper use of two ATRs often under-estimated and very bad used. After setting up destinations such as Rome, Vienna, Tessaloniki etc etc well within the range and comfort range BH can start giving away paxs and taking other ones to fill its own A/C.
This model, of giving and not offering anything to take wont give any benefit... That is my educated opinion
Though I agree with you I still think that B&H Airlines has done well to go to bed with Air Serbia. It's not as if they will desperately feed JU's Belgrade network the same way Croatia Airlines and Adria are feeding Star Alliance hubs. They will still fly to other destinations which could be, in theory, served well from Belgrade.
DeleteNow, if JA said that they will be cancelling CPH because they can serve it via BEG and JU then your theory could apply.
I think this is more oriented towards the destinations it can't serve with its Atr like Moscow, Abu Dhabi/Dubai, London... so in a way it's not such a bad idea. Why have Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa... take these passengers when they can make money from them by flying them to Belgrade.
Well, this step is not ultimately bad since the existing flight was arriving to SJJ at "unusable" time.
DeleteHowever, whole logic of management is wrong since they abandoned the idea of operating to Skopje which is measuring strong growth and to Amsterdam which is one of the main hubs for American flights.
It big and sad true that BH needs any kind of jet to be called slightly serious. On the other hand stopping the expansion of SJJ terminal is a political move and absolutely bad one.
We all know that it is a matter of day when big companies will start regular service to Sarajevo. Tourist wise, Sarajevo is getting crazy numbers in past two years and the fact that couple of the world biggest hotel branches are coming to market is just reinforcing the issue.
Unfortunately, we - aviation enthusiasts can only hope that our sky will be managed by somebody who is professional.
I personally wish success to all ex-yu companies and tourism markets. And lets hope for brighter future...
But I guess they had no other choice than to leave Amsterdam after Turkish Airlines took back their jet aircraft.
DeleteWhy isn't B&H Airlines flying to Rome? Isn't there enough demand? I always thought they could do a few weekly rotations with the Atr.
Well Copenhagen is about the same distance as Amsterdam..
DeleteI can answer you with what I know from company sources. We had a meeting and I suggested Vienna and Rome since Austrian is having great load factors on their two daily flights to Sarajevo with extremely high prices.
The reason given to me at that time ( year ago ) was that company is having a lack of flight deck crew and that any expansion is impossible with total of 9 pilots.
Is that a real reason or stupidy or something bigger and political I honestly don`t know. Reality is that opportunity is there for the taking..
LOT keeping Warsaw during the winter, TAROM not reducing and then even increasing frequencies to Belgrade, B&H being interested for Belgrade (although they have two planes). So Air Serbia just needs to be more affordable than twose previously mentioned and it is going to be a good job for them.
ReplyDeleteYes but Tarom has also offered to cooperate with Air Serbia. JU will place its codeshare on RO's flights from Bucharest, I think it will be on three weekly rotations in the beginning.
DeleteSo technically it's only LOT with whom they will have to truly compete.
JU already has codes on RO's flights. as far as i know, they are keeping all codeshares they had earlier
DeleteYes but it seems that they will not keep all of them. I guess only on the flights which suit them, I think either on the morning or the afternoon ones.
DeleteOT:
ReplyDeleteSupposedly, there is strong interest in the purchase of Ljubljana airport. Also, according to the following article, there are plans to build railway link between the airport and the city in 4 years time:
http://www.sloveniatimes.com/great-interest-in-ljubljana-airport-operator
Also, ch-aviation reports that Adria Airways' only A320 (S5-AAS) is being leased out to Skywings Asia Airlines during the winter season.
Watch out, some disillusioned people might attack you for being a Slovenian chauvinist. ;)
DeleteI wonder what this means for Adria, some people on here have said that they have managed to survive only this long because of the airport authorities which have 'tolerated' for long.
OT: Is it true that B&H Airlines will soon start flying from Mostar to Stuttgart???
ReplyDeleteIf true that would be a rather long flight for an Atr- from a passenger's perspective.
Deletei think it's rather OK-ish (558 mi, approx. 2,5 hrs), which is still shorter than SJJ-IST (571 mi) or SJJ-CPH (853 mi).
Deletespeaking of JA, maybe they should lease one 733 from JU once it's withdrawn form use, to utilise it on SJJ-IST and SJJ-CPH routes. they really need one jet
So it's pretty much the same distance as Belgrade-Athens. I remember when Olympic Airways used to send its Atr to Belgrade, it really was not a pleasant ride, the whole 02.20!
DeleteOT: what happened with airberlin on skp-dus route? it landed in beg and took off just moments ago???
ReplyDeleteYes, I saw it too on flightradar24 but I thought it was some sort of glitch.
DeleteIf it wasn't too long on the ground, it could have been a medical diversion. I doubt it was a mechanical reason.
i saw the aircraft from my window.. it was around 30 mins on the airport..
DeleteAccording to my sources the airplane had to refuel due to strong winds over Serbia
DeleteWhich then begs the question how much fuel did it take in the first place. I mean, I doubt they were slowed for more than 30 minutes. Maybe another cost cutting measure by Air Berlin, don't take more fuel than you absolutely need.
DeleteAIR SERBIA SITE LAUNCHED! But I have a feeling this is not the final version we are going to see.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.airserbia.com/
What's great is that if you select a city it will onyl give you the destinations towards which you can actually connect.
DeleteYou can connect from Australia to most ex-YU destinations!
DeleteWhat? This is exactly the same as jat site. they just changed the name and thats it.. this is shit.. hope they will make something better
ReplyDeleteThey will, the site was blocked for some time before this appeared. The flights are loaded now so that's at least something.
DeleteI am sure they will have a new website once the airline is officially launched. Maybe tomorrow?
Why would they change anything for just couple of hours? There is no sense to change is to this if they have ready website for tomorrow orning. i am afraid that that is the final version. shame
DeleteYup. Get used to more of the same old...same old...
DeleteI POSLE TITA, TITO
ReplyDeleteDude, this is not the final version, check the fleet page ;)
Deletelol
Podgorica-Belgrade-Abu Dhabi-Kuwait and back for €434! :O
ReplyDeleteOK...So..Here I am, thinking it will be all new and cool...
ReplyDeleteAnd iOS/Android friendly...and all...
Than- just change of the banner and nothing else.
On the other hand- what is/was wrong with the old site?
User friendly, not complicated...
(Have you ever had a misfortune using Ryanair site?)
Ryanair is the absolute worst!!! I actually like Jat's website, especially the price calendar, it's great especially if you are flexible.
DeleteThey announced that it will be Android compatible hence why I still believe this is not the final version.