Air Serbia to further grow operations this summer

Air Serbia has made further adjustments to its 2020 summer network, with the airline to add frequencies on another two routes out of Belgrade, joining the twelve cities that have already been increased for the upcoming season and the six new destinations it will launch from its hub. The Serbian carrier will be adding another two weekly frequencies between Belgrade and Milan for a total of eight weekly services. It comes just days following the collapse of Air Italy, which maintained operations to cities such as Cairo, New York and Moscow, which are served by Air Serbia. Additionally, the company will add another two weekly flights to Paris for a total of sixteen weekly, although these will run only during April and May, until the airline begins introducing six new routes to its network.

As previously reported, the carrier will up frequencies from the Serbian capital to Prague, Zagreb, Tirana, Skopje, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Dubrovnik, Tivat, Larnaca, Madrid, Barcelona and Istanbul. On the other hand, it will discontinue its four weekly seasonal flights to Hamburg and will no longer babysit Etihad Airways’ daily London Heathrow slots, as was the case last summer, although these were operated exclusively by Etihad equipment. The airline is still in the process of finalising its fleet for the upcoming summer and is still sourcing a Bombardier CRJ900 to wetlease over the peak summer months. It plans to add two Airbus A319 aircraft to its fleet, while additional ATR72s are also expected to join.

Unlike last year’s summer expansion, which marked Air Serbia’s return to a number of markets previously served by its predecessors Jat Airways and JAT Yugoslav Airlines, this year will see the airline introduce flights to markets it primarily did not serve in the past. The only two to have been operated were Geneva (last served by JAT from Ljubljana in 1985) and Amman (previously maintained over the summer of 2001). The carrier will also be introducing flights to Lviv, Rostov-on-Don, Florence and Chisinau. It will face direct competition only on its services to Geneva from low cost carrier easyJet.

Late last year Air Serbia said it sees low cost competition as a key challenge. However, it noted that offering connections via Belgrade gives it a competitive advantage. “What we have compared to some of our low cost competition in the region is better connectivity with our Belgrade hub. So, we are not only relying on our Belgrade to Paris customers. We are taking people from Tel Aviv, Beirut, Krasnodar - different places that maybe you are not considering that Belgrade could serve as a nice transfer hub for these sorts of markets. When you have these connecting markets, you can then sell 60% of seats on a point to point basis but you can fill the rest of the 40% with transfer passengers”, the company said.

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