Air Serbia has wet-leased a second 148-seat Boeing 737-700 aircraft from Czech carrier Smartwings. The eighteen-year-old jet, registered OK-SWW, joined the fleet last Friday and has since been deployed on charter services from Belgrade to Rhodes, Chania and Antalya, as well as scheduled destinations such as Tirana, Dusseldorf, Istanbul and Frankfurt. The aircraft is currently filed to operate flights until at least the end of the month. The Serbian carrier has been wet-leasing another Smartwings B737-700 since June, which has been primarily utilised on charter flights. as well as a select number of scheduled services to Albania, Italy, Germany and Montenegro. Air Serbia's wet-lease contract with the Czcech carrier runs until September 26.
Air Serbia and Smartwings have concluded an ACMI lease agreement, meaning the Czech carrier is providing aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. Smartwings is the Czech Republic’s largest airline group, dominating the country’s aviation market. The carrier has vast experience in ACMI, wet-leasing aircraft and crew to airlines in France, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia over the summer, as well as Canada in winter. It is also the owner of the country’s national carrier Czech Airlines and one of the largest leisure operators in Central Europe. Its fleet consist of over forty jets.
Air Serbia’s active fleet now comprises of nineteen aircraft, including five ATR72s, ten Airbus A319 jets, one A320, one A330 and two Boeing 737-700s which are on wet-lease. One of the carrier’s eleven A319s has been grounded since early November 2020. The airline disbanded its dedicated charter brand Aviolet earlier this year after retiring its last three remaining Boeing 737-300 aircraft. The carrier currently maintains scheduled operations to over thirty destinations and is running over 1.000 charter flights this summer, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. “In comparison, we operated 299 summer charters in 2020, while we already have more flights than we operated in 2019, or before the coronavirus pandemic, even though that year was a record breaker for us on all fronts”, Air Serbia previously said.
That's because YU-APE is out of service.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to be fired for such bad fleet planning for this summer.
What is bad, if I may ask? How many cancelations they had and what's their on-time performance? Do you have this data? Or you are just spilling hate from the early morning?
DeleteYou are obviously not following their network like YU-APL which took off for Hurgada the other day, engine started to shake over Leskovac. They returned to BEG, kept passengers in the plane, fixed the problem, took off again, same problem, they returned once again to BEG but they didn't have spare crew so the flight was moved for next morning. Passengers were left at the airport the whole night in BEG and in HRG.
DeleteAgain, they have had almost no flight cancellations this summer. So they must have done something right.
DeleteThat's one incident over hundreds of flights in the last three months? Anything else? In this case crew was the problem, not the plane itself. If we all want for them to be profitable, they need to optimize their operations. Having an extra crew on standby 24/7 is not ideal way to operate costwise.
DeleteI agree with Prepdlica. There have been no massive delays or incidents this summer despite fleet being fully utilised.
DeleteYou guys spoke too soon. YU-ARB diverted over Hungary and returned to Belgrade (on route to New York). It's now parked at B1. Don't know what the issue is.
DeleteExtreme weather in New York.
DeleteDid they (ARB) have to dump fuel to land in Beg?
DeleteHurricane in New York yesterday
DeleteConsidering how this year began and Air Serbia’s monitoring of the situation, having a couple of canceled flights in a month is actually not serious at all. That’s commendable that they are operating as many charter and scheduled services as they are. No one needs to be fired for fleet planning. Maybe you should be over there providing them some professional consulting services on how they should operate their fleet for optimal returns.
DeleteSerbia seems to have a serious workforce shortage in most technical fields and industries...
ReplyDelete?
DeleteIn alot of fields there are workforce shortages, but that doesn't have anything to do with todays topic.
DeleteAir Serbia does not seem to be able to handle a fleet they need so they need to acquire expensive lease contracts. Bad news!
ReplyDeleteWe don't really know if it's expensive or not.
DeleteLast minute leases with crews at the height of the summer season are never cheap.
DeleteWhat do you suggest they did? Cancel flights and leave passengers stranded?
DeleteHow about they start planning better for the future? We are at the end of August which means that they knew what the month will look like for like two months. Agencies don't book charters a week in advance but months.
DeleteThat means JU management knew what risks they were up against and unfortunately that risk did not pay off. Now they have to lease expensive planes to make up for their bad planning.
If you need the aircraft just for one or two months, than I think it is cheaper to pay the expensive wet-lease than to pay the cheap long-term dry-lease the whole year.
DeleteWe don't have the whole information so we cannot judge. Let's just be glad that they have such strong demand.
for couch selectors and for couch CEO you do not need the whole information hahahha
DeleteWe are in the middle of pandemic, so I am not sure what kind of planning one could make, based on what? Who would in the wildest wet dreams guess this summer will be not just better than 2020, but better than 2021?! NOONE!
DeleteSo stop bullshiting about poor fleet planning, but make some constructive comments that has sense.
"Bad planning" this year is something that everyone is suffering of in aviation, tourism, rental car, ground transportation, car production... They all planned less then the demand this year, yet noone is blaming anyone knowing what we are all facing with.
And yes, wet lease is maybe expensive if you look price per day/flight, but if it the best option in situation like this and everyone who can would do it nowadays.
Absolute and utter nonsense. It's all about bad planning because charter flights created the biggest problem for JU. These are schedule in advance meaning JU knew there would be a lot of demand in July and August. This winter there will be more demand as we see from SU keeping BEG daily, FZ going double daily, LG sticking around, AUH going to 3 weekly, Wizz bringing the third plane in December and so on.
DeleteWe can already see, pandemic or not, that many markets will start recovering just like tourism recovered this summer. JU was totally unprepared for all that. They should have known around Easter when Egypt boomed that things were going to look better than last year. They didn't because their management played it safe. They took a bet and lost.
And did you know this will be this good this year?!
DeleteWhy aren't you CEO of some company already then?
In the end, the question is could the Aviolet B737-300 have operated another summer? Of course the bigger question is why a fleet renewal process hasn't taken place.
ReplyDeleteThat's a question only overpaid guys like Marek and Naysmith can answer.
DeleteOne has spare 700 cycles and second close to 200, so YES, those 737-300 could fly without problem this summer charter season without extra expenses of ACMI leasing
DeletePerhaps the leases were cheaper than maintenance, spare parts and crew training needed to keep the B733's active this summer?
DeleteAlot here seems to be forgetting that the B733's were retired when the fleet was barely operating 1 rotation per day. Holding onto aircraft not operating is expensive, regardless if you own them or not, especially for months while you establish whether demand will pick up or not.
They obviously did not foresee this pace of recovery.
ReplyDeleteTrue dat.
DeleteB.s. that
DeleteGood
ReplyDeleteAnyone flown on these wetlease Smartwings planes?
ReplyDeleteThis goes to show that JU needs to more aircraft.
ReplyDeleteWhy did the retire their 737s then?
ReplyDeleteBecause they were over 30 years old and expensive to maintain.
DeleteI don't get people. When they were flying the B737-300s around you were all saying these were flying coffins that needed to be retired. When they retire them you all ask why they retired them.
DeleteWhat are you talk'in 'bout? Not everybody tought they should be retired.
DeleteThe retirement of the flying coffins was the best decision they ever did !!!
DeleteOnly crazies will criticize them for that .
So called crazies criticize them because they retired them without replacing them first.
DeleteStill better than having flying coffins ..
DeleteEven the cargo airlines have moved to NGs which are 20 years younger than JU's 737-300s. It was about time they were retired.
DeleteThey wetlease that plane for just four weeks ?
ReplyDeleteIt will be longer
DeleteActually this plane is the replacement for the other one whichs lease ends end of this month .
DeleteSad ...
No, it is not. That wet lease lasts until the end of next month. Don't comment if you don't know.
DeleteBut this new one has been flying for AS since Friday.
DeleteThey will lease the two just for a month .
DeleteTherafter its just one wetlease .
No, if you have two planes in your fleet that are wet leased than it is two wet leases. Both planes are flying.
DeleteIt would better they had an all A320/ Atr fleet .
ReplyDeleteAgree. Operationally it is easier.
DeleteFurther evidence demand is returning.
ReplyDeleteEventually demand will return, and it seems earlier rather than later, and they will need to add more aircraft to their fleet.
ReplyDeleteMarek is Czech and these probably expensive leases are from the Czech Republic. Hm.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I wrote the same when the first Smartwings plane arrived and my post was erased by ex-yu within minutes. Yours here the whole day. Bravo ex-yu!
DeleteOčigledno je da nisu očekivali ovoliku potražnju ovog leta. Sada bar znaju šta im je činiti sledeće godine. Moraju dodati u flotu bar 2 A321 da bi odgovorili na širenje Wizera. A za sve stručnjake pitanje, šta je skuplje,iznajmiti avion od Čeha na 1 mesec ili uzeti na lizing A319 koji će cele zime biti prizemljem?
ReplyDeleteА када су агенције појуриле да букирају авионе никоме није пало на памет да прилагоди понуду потражњи тако што ће барем изнајмити додатни А319? Овако испадају крајње неозбиљни.
DeleteЕво данас поподне Aegean шаље А321 из Хераклиона! Визер им је већ ушао на Санторини и Крит а вероватно ће увести још летњих дестинација следећег лета. ЈУ мора бити озбиљнија када је у питању конкуренција ... не могу баш све једноставно блокирати.
Mislim da nisu problem partneri,njih je lako isplanirati 2-3 meseca unapred. Nisu očekivali jaku potražnju za redovnim letovima pa je zbog toga nastao problem sa flotom. I dobro je da je tako,trebaće puno para za proširenje sledeće godine.
DeleteČarteri��
DeleteCela sezona je bila u zadnjem minutu. Bukvalno su se čarteri bukirali po 15 dana unapred i isto tako otkazivali, uslovi su promenjeni jer agencije do 15.03. nisu mogle da garantuju niti jedan avion i zahtevali su svi da se promene uslovi za ovu sezonu.
DeleteDa tako nije bilo ne bi bilo niti 10 posto čartera.
Ко је добар у послу зна да понекад мораш ризиковати. За ЈУ то је барем лако јер баратају са пореским парама и нико из менаџмента није одговоран за промашаје. Знали се већ почетком јуна да ће сезона покидати. Сада су имали јединствену прилику да набаве јефтине А319. Следеће године ситуација ће се колико толико побољшати и цене ће скочити.
DeleteAt least they are proactive. Much better than what I expected for this summer.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! JU is doing the best possible at the moment. All of you criticizing JU, just take a look at the nearest neighbours to the west : touristic season booming, numbers on more than 90 percent of the record 2019, and OU fly Q400's and feed LH at FRA, no new services, almost no charters, they will drop to 10 %market share this year
DeleteThe charter season seems to be very strong this year.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense. Lots of pent up demand and people who didn't go on holiday last year.
DeleteFor the next summer they are going to need at least two new A320s.
ReplyDeleteI would prefer them to lease Airbus 320...
ReplyDeleteWaiting for sukhois.....
ReplyDeleteHopefully not.
DeleteRadim za LYBE i secam se kada smo videli njihov raspored znali smo da nece moci tako. Planirali su leto bez rezervnog aviona! I naravno kada su avioni poceli da ispadaju i da se pravi haos brze bolje su vratili jedan ATR a posle nabavili i ove 737.
ReplyDeleteMoraju se bolje spremiti za leto. Svake godine obecaju previse a ne isprate sa flotom.
The timetable may be ambitious, but they are pulling it off. Jat used to create ambitious schedules only to cancel hundreds of flights while combining hundreds more. Looks like we have forgotten about rotations such as BEG-BRU-AMS-BEG or BEG-CPH-ARN-BEG.
DeleteIt's good that they secured aircraft so their schedule is not affected.
ReplyDeleteThey really need to do something about their fleet.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened with Air Serbia's Boeing crew?
ReplyDeleteThey work on Airbus and ATRs.
DeleteTowards the management, still insisting to increase their TrustPilot rankings. It seems they have a serious issue with the lost luggage. I mean, some comments are from Serbs as well:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.trustpilot.com/review/airserbia.com
Yes, the Czechs offer might've been good, but having such a heavily mixed fleet for such a small airline is not very positive because maintenance becomes harder. Having a fleet of 15 or 20 planes with a mix of ATR, Airbus and Boeing is seriously surreal. I don't know if the airline is thinking big, wanting to cover underserved cities, focused on the capital, wanting to kinda forcibly cover other Serb cities but wanting to create this kinda hub in the capital. Today wanting to be with the Arabs and next day suddenly disconnecting. ASL is a new company, this I understand and also why kill the successful charter brand? The yellow and blue logo said it all: holidays.
I hope this Czech CEO opens his eyes soon because it becomes hard following the logic after all those years.
You comment would make sense if they dry leased these Boeings. As they didn't your thinking is irrelevant. And actually they did remove their old Boeing planes to unify the fleet so I really don't know what you are talking about. Also who is the Czech CEO you are talking about? You are using words "surreal" and "hard following the logic" and both can be applied to your comment.
DeleteJiri Marek, just Google and ok he is not the CEO but has an important role. I know my comment was kinda direct but at least it was true. ASL strategy is hard to understand. They kinda seem to be all over the place.
DeleteUnifying the fleet? Getting rid of the charter brand only to lease a bit newer Boeings from other carriers. Logic? Zero.
this guy has no clue what an ACMI is thats why his comment has no sense.
Delete@10,32
DeleteAviolet was created to distance the B733's from the Air Serbia brand and nothing more. Little marketing play to give an illusion of a charter brand yet they were used daily on scheduled flights. Having a dedicated charter brand while overall having a fleet of 20 aircraft is stupid to say it lightly. The scheduled routes they operated frustrated pax where JU was called out for it, advertising the A319 product with at the time dedicated J class seats, wifi etc while a B733's waited for them at the gate where silver duct tape was a favourite 'decoration' around the cabin. Now that they have finally retired the B733's the Aviolet brand is no longer needed. Nothing was different between Aviolet and JU other than uniforms, which was an additional expense for the airline.
Not sure where you pulled out 'successfull' to describe it.
Well, the Aviolet brand was cool and straight to the point. I remember the numerous charter flights to the Mediterranean. The fleet was kinda old, yes but most European companies also have old planes. Can you deny the success of Aviolet? Can you deny it had a good and representative logo?
DeleteNow we have Air Serbia flying random Kraljevo flights, flying proudly with the Tesla tail and suddenly doing Hurghada charters.
All normal airlines would never mix and have a clear strategy and vision. Yes, you can be an ASL fanboy, but also have to accept and respect critics. ASL is a cool airline, but lacking strategy on my opinion. This fleet diversity is expensiv. Why do Air Baltic have 1 sole fleet type? Why does LO not have Airbuses? Why does Iberia or AerLingus not have any Boeings? End of story, the ASL story is strange.
I notice that on scheduled flights the B737s are constantly sent on the same routes. Is there a particular reason?
ReplyDeleteThe first leased 737 (OK-SWT) is primarily sent to Antalya (as I can see via Flightradar) due to increased demand. Antalya flights are currently performing very well for ASL - I've flown to Antalya recently and at one point there were 3 ASL planes on the ground!
DeleteVeliki novac je potreban za obnavljane flote Er Srbije.
ReplyDeleteTesko je zamisliti dogradjeni i obnovljeni Aerodrom Beograd za prijem 15 miliona putnika i vise bez Er Srbije bez prosirene i obnovljene flote. Sa uvecanjem dugolinijskog i regionalnog saobracaja. Otvaranja linija sa par manjih kargo aviona. I otvaranja domacih linija za opsluzivanje Nisa, Uzica i Kraljeva.
Sa avionima do 30 sedista. Za deset godina letece i elektricni avioni manjih kapaciteta.🛫
Short term lease to cover the increased demand in charters is normal. They are using them on regular flights in the meantime. It is perfectly okay for peak season.
ReplyDeleteNone of us could have guessed what the COVID conditions would be during the summer. Who would have thought that we could see 8-9 flights to Hurghada in one day only...
Besides, the winter is coming, COVID uncertainties are continuing and it is very difficult to anticipate which country will be open and in what way. It is better to be prudent than to increase fixed costs in dire situation.
So far, JU is proactive. Good for them.
BR, Eight.
+1
Delete+2
DeleteWhy don't they buy or wet-lease another airbus 320??
ReplyDeleteAt this moment a A330 is probably cheaper then A320
DeleteWhat do you do with the A320 in winter?
DeleteJU had 2 of them until recently. Both were barely flying in the winter, mostly CDG and ZRH.
JU doesn't need capacity as much as aircraft and frequencies.
At this moment YU has what it needs, maybe just to rejuvenate it's fleet a bit.
DeleteWhat do you do with the A320 in winter? What a cringe comment.
DeleteYou stimulate demand. You could start with winter flights to Hurgada. Why is this market left to Air Cairo?
You could work with tour operators to bring foreign tourists to Belgrade. Thousands of Turks, Russians and so on are coming to Belgrade in winter but very few of them fly on JU. Try to get that market to fly with you and you will fill the A320 with no problem.
But for JU it's just easier to be lazy, sit around, fly 2 times per week around and hope people will fly with them. You gotta be proactive, you gotta fight for your market just like QR fought for Serbia and won big.
I am also interested what will happen when they will restore Nis flights. A319 was based ther afterall and until than they will need two airbuses probably.
DeleteBEG is a massively smaller hub compared to IST and SVO. Larger demand gravitates towards SU and TK because of the connection possiblities, leaving JU at the beginning at a disadvantage. Due to the size of their airlines, they can easily fill larger aircraft and undercut JU on almost all aspects. Bringing foreign tourists to Belgrade isn't the sole responsibility of JU, even though JU can do alot more in doing business with tourist agencies.
DeleteJU was using the A320's primarily on CDG and ZRH but their stratergy seems to be more frequencies rather than capacity, which is where the A319 is better. On these 2 routes in particular they had intentions to bring ZRH to 3 x daily and CDH to I believe 16 x weekly on the A319. Frequencies help in keeping an airline competitive as well.
The A319 is more easily thrown onto regional routes as it isnt as large as an upgauge in capacity compared to the A320, which gives them further flexibility throughout their network.
As for flying 2 per week, most of their destinations were flown at least daily. It was in the last 2 years we saw these 2-3 weekly flights with new destinations, which has been working for them. Prior to the pandemic, almost all of these new routes from 2019 were to see frequency upgrades with another 6 new destinations to follow. Throwing daily or double daily immediately into new destinations has hurt them in every single destination: VAR, BNX, WAW, ZAG, BUD, AUH, BEY. After all, QR started BEG via ESB and SOF before going direct, while TK started BEG with 3 pw. JU isn't perfect and comes with some imperfections, but lazy isn't one of them.
If needing to do a last-minute lease because of overwhelming demand is the biggest problem that JU has - then THANK GOD! :D
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that many other airlines wish for such problems.
I just would like to hear the LF for the last month on all flights. From what I hear from people that took the charters, the flights were completely full to Egypt - as were the flights from New York.
The good news is that they certainly made a profit - too bad most of the money went to pay the Etihad debt.
This is news from a week ago. Day old news
ReplyDeletePlane entered fleet 2 days ago and for you it is news from a week ago?
DeleteAre these planes white? In Smartwings livery or with Air Serbia stickers?
ReplyDeleteFull Smartwings livery
DeleteThe comment section is going crazy as always.
ReplyDeleteOver a 1000 charter flights this season is a great number, that's probably more then YU dreamed about.
733 needed to be maintained thru out the year with crews parts and all. They could have flown this year but the price would probably eat out any profit they could make and then some more.
No, they don't need a fleet modernisation unless the government will be funding it. We don't even know how long the borders will stay open and how long they could be closed.
And lastly YU just paid off the second loan to Etihad Partners. So don't just go assuming they are all lazy overpaid managers. For all that's shown YU had a great season where half of money of aquire a 220 went on a loan, heck they could have gotten their own 330 for the money.
I'm not saying it couldn't have been handled better, I'm just saying with all the things considered YU and it's management did a decent job.
What happened with the JFK flight today? I just heard from someone on the flight that they were on the plane for 3 hours and the flight got cancelled because of the tropical storm in New York. Now they are giving out vouchers for an overnight in Belgrade?
ReplyDeleteSo there you go. You have your explanation. There is tropical storm warning over entire New York state.
Delete"Due to Hurricane #Henri there are 50 departure cancellations for today at #JFKAirport. Please contact your airlines for the most up-to-date information regarding your flight as the storm continues to impact the region. Use this link for our flight tracker. http://jfkairport.com/flight-search"
DeleteDobro je što ne lete utorkom,moći će sutra da obave današnji let.
DeleteLet je prebačen za sutra u 9h.
DeleteNot only JU seems to have succes with charters but also foreign airlines have got a taste for Belgrade charters .
ReplyDeleteFlynas and Jazeera Airways come to my mind.
It would be fantastic if these two would start regular flights the next summer.
Just look at Aegean, they are successfully operating charter flights from HER and RHO. Two markets they almost completely took from JU. I guess Air Serbia couldn't block them so they backed out. Interesting that Aegean has 5 weekly to ATH on A320 compared to JU which has 7 on A319.
DeleteWhat happened to the grounded A319? 10 months is pretty long to be out of service
ReplyDeleteIt was returned to leasor, and waiting for new contract
DeleteOva vest jasno govori da je povlacenje postojecih aviona 737-300, koji su bili u vlasnistvu kompanije (nema troškova iznajmljivanja), kosi su imali su dovoljno resursa za još ovu seznou, bilo je dovoljno posada za ovaj tip, bila brzopleta i nepotrebna odluka. Da tačno je da avioni nisu bili u idealnom stanju, ako gledamo stanje enterijara, što je opet pitanje za kompaniju zašto nisu malo osvežili kabinu, ali što se tiče tehničkog održavanja su bili besprekorni i ranijih godina upadali i u redovni saobraćaj kada su noviji Airbus avioni redovno ispadali. Da, trošili su više goriva, ali na charter saobraćaju gde se avion proda agenciji, ta cena je značajnije manja nego uzeti ACMI u jeku sezone.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more, but Czech friends need to support each other in difficult times
DeleteLove the classic B737 :D
ReplyDelete