Air Serbia eyes regional and Central European expansion

Air Serbia plans to continue developing its hub and spoke model, linking the region with the rest of Europe, and will put a greater emphasis on Central Europe as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking to “Business Traveller”, Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Jiri Marek, said, “We would like to fully return to 2019 levels, and, in this respect, we are on the right track. We will then pursue the multilateral development strategy that we planned before the pandemic, complementing it with elements of our crisis management that has proved successful. We are definitely considering greater presence in Central Europe, so we have already restored flights to Prague. Prior to the pandemic, we announced Lviv as a new destination in our network. We are carefully looking at potential routes in Bulgaria and Romania. Prior to Covid-19, Chisinau was also considered, so we will continue this regional development”, Mr Marek said. He added, “As for Poland, we would most likely be interested in launching our own service from Belgrade to one of the airports in the south of the country, perhaps to Krakow”.

Mr Marek noted that Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania remain key regional markets for the Serbian carrier. “These are markets in which we were strongly positioned prior to the pandemic. In Slovenia, we were present even before the collapse of Adria Airways and were able to quickly respond to its demise and increase our operations from Ljubljana. North Macedonia and Montenegro are also important to us. There is a nice combination of strong demand for travel to Belgrade, as well as transit traffic in these markets. It is the perfect combination for any airline, all you need to do is meet this demand with the right number of frequencies - which is what we are doing, increasing our number of flights to Skopje and Podgorica”. Mr Marek added, “Slovenia is a bit different in this respect, point to point traffic is more important here. Tirana is also worth mentioning. We currently fly there eleven times per week, and we have plans to further develop this route. We always wanted to be a regional leader and expand throughout, so even before the pandemic, we announced the opening of six new routes and will continue to focus on further growing in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine and developing the region's markets, offering convenient connections with the rest of Europe through Belgrade”.

Air Serbia believes the ongoing expansion of Belgrade Airport will enable it to further grow its operations and develop its hub and spoke model. “We want to position ourselves as the leading regional airline in this part of Europe and we believe that so far, we have been successful in this respect. We would like to continue doing so in the future. Currently, Belgrade Airport is undergoing a massive infrastructure upgrade, and we will most likely see the first results of this process in October, so it's not an easy period. On the one hand, the market continues to react very quickly to the increased and still growing demand, while on the other, the airport is modernising its infrastructure, which may cause some difficulties for passengers. However, we believe that after the reconstruction of the terminal is complete and the airport undergoes its transformation, we will have all the possibilities to implement our strategy without any infrastructure limitations”, Mr Marek said.