Egypt Air's subsidiary Air Cairo will introduce scheduled flights between Sharm El Sheikh and Belgrade, boost its existing year-round operations from Hurghada and cooperate more closely with Air Serbia this summer season. The airline's CEO, Yasser Elramly, announced that the carrier would launch a two weekly service from Sharm El Sheikh, located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, at the beginning of May. Tickets are to be put on sale soon. Furthermore, the carrier will boost its existing operations between Hurghada and the Serbian capital from five weekly to daily. As a result, the airline will maintain a total of nine weekly services to Belgrade.
Mr Elramly noted that the airline has been present on the Serbian market on a year-round basis for the past five years and did not discontinue services to the country during the tourism downturn in Egypt. Last year, the carrier handled 27.000 passengers on its services to and from Belgrade. "In 2016 we handled 6.000 travellers on our Belgrade flights. This figure grew to 15.000 by the end of 2017 and in 2018 we welcomed 27.000 passengers on board our aircraft". He added, "Our target for 2019 is to carry 35.000 travellers to and from Belgrade". The airline is also planning to introduce services to Niš.
This summer, Air Serbia will resume year-round operations between Belgrade and Cairo, linking the two cities with a scheduled air service for the first time in fourteen years. Air Cairo's CEO noted the airline was seeking to cooperate closely with the Serbian carrier on the new two weekly service, which is set to launch on June 4. This may include a codeshare agreement between the two airlines. Air Cairo's parent company, Egypt Air, currently codeshares on Aegean Airlines' service between Athens and Belgrade. The number of Serbian tourists visiting Egypt increased 144% in 2018 compared to the year before, according to the Egyptian Embassy in Belgrade. Air Cairo, Air Serbia and AlMasria Universal Airlines all maintained flights between the two countries, the latter with a widebody Airbus A330 aircraft.
Nice to see another new service for BEG and more frequencies being added.
ReplyDeleteI think that makes it 11 new routes for this summer.
DeleteAnd something like 40 extra frequencies or more.
DeleteTogether with new JU routes it would be almost 70 new weekly frequencies from BEG this summer
DeleteThat's 10 extra daily flights! :O
DeleteOn top of that, JU is supposed to operate 10% more charter flights than last year.
Can the terminal handle all this extra flights?
DeleteI think the French should immediately start expansion of the facilities.
They are moving around some flights, SU is moving from 18.45 to 20.20 when the airport is completely empty.
DeleteI think all these new flights will arrive/depart during the quiet periods. Even AF flies during the quiet period, I think they depart at 15.25 so right between JU's two waves.
Air Cairo will most likely fly in the middle of the early morning, like their Hurghada flights, so no major problem there.
DeleteI think Air Cairo lands at 04.30 and returns at 05.30 so they 'open' the business day at BEG. :D
DeleteIt's interesting how Air Serbia (Aviolet) operates all its charter during te daytime. A couple of years ago during Jat Airways all charters were operated during the night/early morning.
DeleteThat's because Jat had no planes to fly charters during the day.
DeleteDon't forget that LO is also increasing BEG from 11 to 12 weekly from September 2019.
DeleteNice, and t's only February/March. I'm sure we will see some other increases in the 19/20 winter season.
Delete*it's
DeleteSo there will be for sure double daily flights in summer between Serbia and Egypt, 11 on Air Cairo, 2 on JU to CAI and God knows how many charter flights. Impressive.
DeleteHurgada remains unchanged:
DeleteHRG-BEG 02.00-05.30
BEG-HRG 06.30-10.00
It's good that they sell tickets normally as well, online.
ReplyDeleteIf you can find a seat. In January me and my girlfriend wanted to go. They had only 1 seat on the outbound and 2 on the inbound but obviously we needed 2 tickets both ways. I guess tour operators buy the majority of the seats.
Delete28,000 passengers is not bad for a relatively unknown airline.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many people in total flew from BEG to Egypt in 2018.
DeleteI would say probably over 100,000 considering Almasria operated the whole summer with A330s and Air Serbia also flew to Hurghada.
DeleteWill Al Masria be back this summer?
DeleteYes, they have been flying for two years already.
Delete@9.14 I'm sure there were many who transferred via other airports too :)
DeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but didn't Al Masria go year-round this winter?
DeleteThey were supposed to but they didn't in the end, they only extended flights into the end of 2018.
DeleteNot bad about the codeshare with Air Serbia. Air Cairo flies some domestic routes from CAI like Aswan, Luxor, Sharm, Hurghada. Could be really beneficial for JU.
ReplyDeleteJU has more to gain than Air Cairo here.
DeleteBoth would benefit actually.
DeleteDamn, airlines keep increasing and announcing new flights to Belgrade ... this summer will be crazy
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Egypt Air didn't consider introducing scheduled flights from CAI to BEG. Too late now.
ReplyDeleteEgypt Air could use Egypt Air Express to fly to Belgrade.
DeleteI don't see the point now with JU starting flights.
DeleteWhy not if the market is there? Obviously the number of Serbs heading to Egypt is growing.
DeleteSo I would assume the majority of people flying between Belgrade and Cairo at the moment use Aegean?
DeleteI think many use Alitalia actually.
DeleteThere are a lot of possibilities. One of the cheapest is SU but there are also flights with TK, A3, OS etc.
DeleteI think Turkish Airlines carries most of them but I think Pegaus does well as they tend to be dumping prices left and right.
DeleteYep TK and Pegasus are quite affordable options to Egypt.
DeleteI always found it interesting how Air Cairo and Tunis Air fly to BEG year round on what are esentially summer holiday routes.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people during winter months is seeking to go somewhere where climate is nicer and Northern Africa have perfect climate and also is close and cheap.
DeleteThat is the reason why Egypt and Tunis have year round flights to Belgrade.
It's cheaper to spend 2 weeks in Sharm or Tunis in winter then stay at home in Belgrade. I'm serious, whole hotel package and air fare included.
DeletePeople go at winter there too. It is warm & sunny, it is cheap....sometimes cheaper than staying in Belgrade :)
DeleteJust be extra careful about the food you consume in the all inclusive hotels, lots of food-poisoning incidents.
DeleteAlso drink only bottled water.
^ Thanks for the advice mom.
DeleteNice good luck to them. So that will be three destinations from Egypt in total with scheduled flights to BEG.
ReplyDeleteYes, now that Egypt is covered I hope they focus on getting flights to Morocco.
DeleteFirst of all visa regime with Morocco must be lifted and after it we could expect RAM to start flying to BEG
DeleteBut we have visa regime with Egypt and yet there are a lot of flights :D
DeleteYou can't obtain Moroccan visa at the airport so it rejects people travelling to that country
DeleteIs this the one you announce from Nis just month a ago ex-yu? :)
ReplyDeleteThis shows exactly how good idea was them to take over Nis Airport!
Well done guys!
Maybe you should read the article.
DeleteWell Belgrade is obviously the bigger market and it stimulates more demand. Also, we are still in February, there is still time to announce Nis flights. Maybe there was no demand?
DeleteTruth! Here is the article that says: Niš Airport secures Egypt flights from May 2019 with Air Cairo pictured!
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2018/12/nis-airport-secures-egypt-flights-from.html
It says in this very article you are commenting on (which you obviously haven't even read) the following "The airline is also planning to introduce services to Niš".
DeleteLol! It says: ¨Niš Constantine the Great Airport WILL BE LINKED to Egypt this coming summer season, connecting the Serbian city with the African continent through scheduled flights for the first time.¨ In addition, services between Cairo and Belgrade are also EXPECTED to launch.
DeleteBEG could easily handle 6.2 million next year.
ReplyDeleteThat would be over half a million passenger increase. I just don't see it happening this year.
DeleteAnyhow, BEG goes over 6 million easily
DeleteWhy not? BEG grew by 300.000 in 2018 without any major announcements.
Delete6.2 million pax for 2019 would be a 560.000 increase compared to 2018.
Deleteit is very difficult.
Why? BEG already added 300.000 last year and this year we are going to see more than 70 weekly flights being added.
DeleteI think 6.1 is more realistic. But we will see.
DeleteThere are some great deals for Egypt at the Belgrade tourism fair. I am sure this is what stimulated extra demand. Egypt was always extremely popular with Serbs. I remember even 15 years ago JU used to operate B727 to Egypt, sometimes even two at the same time.
ReplyDeleteYep Egypt is firmly coming back as a favorite holiday destination.
DeleteI wonder at the expense of which other tourist destination. Turkey?
DeleteGreat news. Good to see more and more flights in the pipeline for BEG.
ReplyDeleteCairo is the only new intercontinental service for Air Serbia. What happened to expected destinations in North America and Asia, PEK and YYZ in particular?
ReplyDeleteWell maybe they did the economics of it and decided against it this year. The Canadian ambassador said the YYZ flight would either launch this year or next but that 2020 was more likely.
DeleteWhy not ORD and PEK instead?
DeleteIt's NOT the economics, something else is blocking Air Serbia. Is it YYZ blocking them? Is VINCI dropping their support for Air Serbia long haul? Compare news from 2018 (all from this site) with recent ones:
DeleteEarlier in 2018: VINCI will specifically enable Air Serbia to offer new long haul routes
12 Nov 2018: Air Serbia flights to Toronto "in 2019 or 2020"
26 Nov 2018: New carrier to take over Belgrade - Beijing route
17 Dec 2018: (Air Serbia) new destinations will span across three continents - Europe, North America and Asia
Developments in the last few weeks: Air Serbia new route announcement did not include North America and Asia destinations, no explanation was given from Air Serbia.
Statement from VINCI no longer mentions support for Air Serbia long haul routes, instead:
18 Feb 2019: VINCI: Air Serbia is our primary partner; also: working on attracting "a new generation of long haul airlines"
Looks like there was a quiet change and Air Serbia is no longer expanding long haul. Why?
You are nuts. They (VINCI) said AGAIN at the presentation just two weeks ago how they will support Air Serbia's long haul expansion. "No explanation was given from Air Serbia." they never made any announcement so as to give you any explanation.
DeleteYou should really calm down lol.
^ He has to find something after nostradamus predictions that no one would apply for BEG concession, then that tender is fixed for chinese, then that tender will be annulled, then that VInci won't take over the airport, then that Vinci won't have the money to take over the airport did not come true.
DeleteVinci had a picture of Norwegian, not Air Serbia, during that presentation. There was also this one on 6 Sep 2018: Air Serbia has postponed its plans the launch nonstop flights until 2019.
DeleteOn 6 Dec 2018: long haul operations will largely depend on securing necessary permits and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles on time.
So don't call me nuts and try to position economic reasons as an explanation. Everyone can check this site on metioned dates, all those quotes are there.
You are nuts because you started hatching a conspiracy theory, that's why. Had you watched the presentation, maybe you should have counted how many times images of Air Serbia were shown lol.
DeleteAnd there, you got your answer on what you quoted from 6 December.
And here is another VInci statement about them saying they will work with JU https://www.exyuaviation.com/2019/01/vinci-etihad-to-work-to-expand-air.html
So stop with the hysteria please.
Last quote was from Dec 17, not Dec 6.
DeleteYU-ARA je na mesecnom remontu prosle godine bio u oktoru a ove tek u februaru. Mozda je planirano da predstojecu zimsku sezonu bude uposljeniji? Mozda 2X JFK,2X YYZ i 2X BEJ? A da za sledecu letnju sezonu stigne jos jedan A330. Mozda?
DeleteAnonymous at 10:14
DeleteNo.
Do Egyptians need visa to enter Serbia?
ReplyDeleteEgyptians need visas to enter all EU member countries.
DeleteDo Serbians need visa for Egypt?
DeleteYes you get it on arrival. Usually if it is an organised tour group going they issue it in advance.
DeleteDo you have to pay for it?
DeleteYes. Visa on arrival or online is 25 USD. If you get it at the consulate it's 12 USD.
DeleteNot too expensive but it is interesting to see the large number of tourists foinf to Egypt despite the visas.
DeleteI am sure tour operators include the visa in the price and is obtained in Belgrade.
DeleteThese flights will be a nice addition to BEG
ReplyDeleteGood thing about BEG and Serbia is that it's a source of outbound tourism so in the future we will see more and more airlines add flights.
Delete+1
DeleteAwesome news! Always good to see some more exotic airlines at BEG.
ReplyDeleteespecially when it's an exotic destination with an exotic airline. :D
DeleteWell at least nobody can say the routes to Egypt are political or emigration.
DeleteThey will say it is refugees route :-)
Delete^^The day is still young. :D
DeleteHow many airlines have announced new destinations to Belgrade this summer?
ReplyDelete5 so far. Air Serbia, Air Cairo, Air France, Air Arabia, ASL France.
DeleteNice
DeleteHopefully there will be some others too.
DeleteThe more the merrier.
DeletePositive affects of the concession.
DeleteI really like their livery :)
ReplyDeleteMuch better than what they used to have ;)
DeleteIs Air Cairo an LCC?
ReplyDeleteNope, they serve a full hot meal and luggage is included.
DeleteThey are low fare but not low cost.
DeleteThey are not officially a low cost because they are from Egypt so costs are low by default.
Delete