NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia has downgraded its year-round service between Belgrade and Rijeka to seasonal summer flights due to poor winter loads. The two weekly flights will run until December 9 and resume on May 1, 2020. However, the Serbian carrier will operate one return flight each on December 30, 2019 and January 2, 2020 between the two cities. Services between Belgrade and Rijeka resumed this June after 29 years. The route was initially planned to run on a year-round basis.
Also, they probably need free ATR, for KVO rotation
ReplyDeleteYeah
DeleteIt was known that RJK is the weakest of all year round routes.
DeleteExpected
This just shows how seasonality is an issue in Croatia.
ReplyDeleteBut they got millions from RJK airport to fly there. At least everyone claims so.
DeleteAt least they are adapting to market conditions and act fast .
ReplyDeleteNo more burning money on Nis-Budapest or allocating Atrs to winter routes that are underperforming .
Business sense instead of stubborness .
Business sense??? If they had it they would do something about A330 sitting idle five days a week.
DeleteThey are doing the right thing, it costs them less to have it sit in BEG than to burn thousands of Euros flying on unprofitable flights to New York. All airlines downsize in that period, look at the number of planes LH parks.
DeleteNobody parks planes during winter. They are too expensive to let them stay idle. This is time for a) maintenance, b) countercyclic routes like south-east Asia, c) wet-leases to south-east airlines. LH is overall a bad example here, because they don't have such huge differences between winter and summer, because % of their tourist and vfr pax is smaller and % of their pax flying for business reasons is higher.
DeleteErm look for pictures online of FRA in winter to the south of parallel runways and then tell me no one parks planes in winter. ;)
DeleteAlso FR parks a lot of them as well.
And do you see there any long-haul planes?
Delete@Anon at 19:30
DeleteAir Serbia has their widebody fleet parked 71% (5/7) of winter except around Jan 1 peak. They did their last maintenance in Oct, so no option a) in the dead of the winter. They don't have any routes that fit option b); and option c) is not possible because they need A330 to do Xmas shopping in New York twice weekly. But, if they were not, what's that word... oh yes - STUBBORN, they would have leased second A330 and launched two more destinations. One A330 would be a busy bee serving three destinations in the winter, and second A330 would make some dough with option c). Much, much, much better than current 71% downtime.
@20:32
DeleteGood idea in theory, but if a route is negative performing in the winter, why would flying a second and third choice in winter suddenly be a positive thing to do...
In such a seasonal market like Serbia, there is no call for additional expense just to say that JU flies 2 or 3 long haul routes.
A better suggestion would be to fly NYC in summers and do your option c) in winters
LH parks almost half of its long haul fleet, look at their winter network and how massive their cuts are. Same for FR, it's brutal
DeleteAnon 21:04. You are clearly wrong. And, by the way, FR has no long-haul fleet. All long-haul fleet is fully utilised the way I wrote at 19.30.
DeleteWet leasing that second A330 would help with negative winter performance of the first one.
DeleteLook at the bright (summer) side of it. Both aircraft would be busy flying 6 times a week. JFK would go to daily which can't be done with one plane. Three long haul destinations such as JFK, ORD and YYZ would give additional boost to some of regional JU services such as TIA, TGD, ATH, SKG, ATH. Example schedule:
1st A330: JFK 6 per week
2nd A330: JFK 1pw, YYZ 2-3pw, ORD 2-3pw (total of 6pw)
Great way to lose even more money.
DeleteAnon 19.30.
or, wait for A330 lease to exipre and return it to lessor. Great way to stop losing money.
DeleteГоворим да ће тако да буде али ми не верују. Све указује да ће екипа пустити да се Њујорк угаси. Све урађено до сада за дуголинијски се онда неповратно губи.
DeleteMaybe Split and Dubrovnik makes more sense to fly the whole year
ReplyDeleteKnowing how many people travel with buses and various "unofficial" taxis even during winter, I have zero doubt that BEG-SPU would easily work in winter as 2 pw.
DeleteDo they have enough deep pocket to pay for the tickets what they are really worth? I expect everybody would love to have a porsche, but the true question when planning its production is how many of those people can afford.
DeleteI wonder whether JU would be paying some damages and compensations to RJK for withdrawing from contractually subsidised route. If the route was (heavily) subsidised, which we read about thousand times here, there should have been some contract determinating obligations of both parts. And if breaching the contract, JU is either crazy to withdraw from the service, or is RJK crazy not to include such a possibility in contract, or the route was not subsidised, or at least not much, as I already wrote here claiming that RJK has no money to pay to JU subsidies, neither is the state and Gvt of HR willing to pay subsidies for RJK, and especially for JU. So I would really appreciate if someone can answer to this question of mine, but not based on crystal bowl or ethnical /nazi feelings from both sides, so facts only please, if anybody have them
ReplyDeleteMaybe the subsidies were for a few months in winter with the possibility of being extended.
DeleteOr maybe Rijeka airport said: screw it! We are burning money this winter for a very small return in revenue (ie. Pax flying to and from BEG) so we are cutting the subsidies to JU which mutually agreed also to cut the service as they need an aircraft deployed somewhere else. Win win for both... Well it's not really a win for Rijeka but at least they are being smart...
DeleteOT ... what happened to the KRR JU flight today? it was delayed by only about seven hours; does anyone know the reason?
ReplyDeleteWeather conditions at KRR...
DeleteSource: I am a BEG employee...