NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia will add an Airbus A319 aircraft to its fleet this coming summer. The jet, registered YU-APN, recently received the carrier's livery in Montpelier and is expected to arrive in Belgrade in late April or early May where it will be refurbished with Recaro 3520DE seats. It will have the capacity to handle 144 passengers. The aircraft (pictured below) is almost thirteen years old and formerly operated for Bangkok Airways and Brazil's ITA Transportes Aeros. Air Serbia's CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “Airbus airplanes represent the cornerstone of our fleet and we are very glad to have the opportunity to present the latest addition ahead of the peak of the summer season. With the addition of this aircraft to the fleet, the further expansion of our network we announced for this year, as well as the increase of frequencies of existing flights, will be made easier. We will have the opportunity to significantly improve our operating efficiency and increase capacities in order to respond to demand, while the overhaul of the cabin will provide passengers with greater comfort and enjoyment". The jet is equipped with two IAE V2524-A5 engines. The latest aircraft will be the tenth A319 in Air Serbia’s fleet, which also includes one A330-200 and A320 each, as well as one ATR72-600 and ATR72-500 each, and three ATR72-200 turboprops.
Fantastic. These are the seats they already have in their planes right?
ReplyDeleteYes, same ones. They are quite decent actually.
DeleteI still think they are being too conservative. I think they could have easily taken delivery of another A319.
ReplyDeleteI remember before covid they had 8 A319, 2 A320 and 4 B733 so that's 14 narrowbody aircraft. This summer they are going to be at 11.
More will come. This site itself wrote two weeks ago that several aircraft are coming this summer.
DeleteWhat matters is that they started fixing their ATR fleet. Looking at FR24, seems like one of them is out of service so many flights were delayed or rescheduled.
DeleteWould be fun if they baptized it Paracin (PN).
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note, the more the merrier. JU did well in covid times so they are in much better shape to rebuild their network than some other carriers in Europe.
Haha imagine the possibilities:
Delete-aPA (Pancevo)
-aPB (Priboj)
-aPI (Pirot)
-aPK (Prokuplje)
On a serious note, it would be great for them to finally abandon the failed living legends theme and bring in something different and standardised ie:
-ATR (rivers, lakes, mountains)
- A319/A320 (Serbian cities)
- A330 (famous Serbians)
Excellent idea.
DeleteDoes anyone know what is wrong with the a320 YU-APH?
ReplyDeleteI asked the same several days ago but there were no answers. All I know it flew about a week ago to TGD, returned to BEG with a delay of 2 hrs and the disappeared again into maintenance. Maybe waiting on some part!?!
DeleteThey're absolutely too conservative with their fleet.
DeleteA320 was scheduled on many days to Moscow hence now they have to rebook the pax.
They should have never gotten rid of the second A320, but rather introduce a larger plane (A321) that can fly charters in summer and Moscow, Zurich, Paris in winter.
A321 with JU's current fleet would be a logistics nightmare if it went AOG. Stepping down from an A320 to an A319 is bad enough, imagine stepping down from an A321 capacity to an A319! For A321's JU would need a larger fleet of A320's. However, JU has alot to do filling their A319's, especially in the winter months.
DeleteDestinations such as CDG and ZRH need frequencies to keep up with competition, especially ZRH, where LX is quick to adjust frequencies. Capacity doesn't help them here. Half the connections from these flights is on the ATR. A321 does nothing there. As for SVO, they actually went from 14 pw to 10 pw pre pandemic on the A319, while in the mean time SU went from 14 pw to 21 pw + the addition of Nordwind and Red Wings as well. An A321 isn't going to change the fact that their sales team simply doesn't do the best job filling seats.
That's why JU's entire sales, marketing and commercial departments need to be fired. Every airline around the world can fill a plane in summer, it's a challenge to do it outside that period. That's what separates successful from unsuccessful airlines.
DeleteOnce the summer is gone, there aren't as many passengers flying around but they are still there. That's the fight JU should be fighting especially when it comes to transfers. However, it can't do it with the current set up and a non-existent marketing strategy. Air Serbia's brand is weak outside a few European markets.
Their competition is becoming increasingly aggressive in Belgrade. For example, I noticed that yesterday, today and tomorrow KLM boosted their morning departure out of AMS to BEG to a B737-700. I don't know if this is an exception or not but for JU it's not a good sign.
Unfortunately JU is still autistic when it comes to alliances and code-shares. They finally added LCA on Aegean to their website but on most days they are selling one way tickets for over €400. Not to mention that on their website, it states that ATH-LCA is operated by Aegean's B733. lol
Imagine being an airline and tolerating such a mistake for months. One would expect JU to know what kind of planes their code-share partner is operating on the route they placed their code on. I am certain Aegean did not provide them with this false information.
Since I have some free time on my hands, I decided to check the prices for their new ITA code-share.
Reggio Calabria: 35.000 RSD
Bologna: not offered on their website via Rome despite the PR fluff piece.
Florence: once a week, on Mondays for 42.000
Naples: from 35.000, some days it's 38.000 or 40.000.
Verona: 36.000
If Air Serbia is struggling to fill their planes outside the busy summer period then they have themselves to blame. I would understand if they didn't have transfers to rely on or alliance partners to help them out in various hubs but they do have both of those. With such pricing no wonder people are switching to their competition.
They can't be a serious player with 2 to 4 weekly flights outside the summer season to larger European airports like Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid ... all these need to be daily year-round and then to receive a boost when summer comes. In order to attract transfers they need to be competitive and to offer as much flexibility as possible. If they stick to gastos then they will enter a fight with Wizz Air which they just can't win. Air Serbia triumphed over Wizz Air in places like LCA exactly because they had transfers to help them out.
Air Serbia needs to fundamentally change its commercial strategy and to become competitive in that department. Once it does that it will have no problems filling an A321 even outside the summer period.
@nemjee
DeleteCouldn't agree more.
Their website has quite a bit of illogical things. Playing around on their booking page, AMM-JFK via BEG isn't an option, rather just via DOH on B6 flight numbers, even though the outbound sector works very well via BEG on JU. The list goes on.
Unfortunately the list gets longer and longer as time goes by. I didn't know this about AMM and JFK. It truly is a disaster. Makes you wonder who is in charge of code-shares and alliances over there.
Delete+1
DeleteThey market their product rarely and poorly. The last time I saw their ad it was for Croatian Adriatic destinations back in January, while both Wizz and Aegean had ads for February city breaks. Guess who underperformed at BEG in January and February. They are just bad at marketing.
Delete@Nemjee brought up an excelent point with the ITA codeshares and how disfunctional they are. I regularly check on those as i fly to italy regularly, and their prices are unrealistic at best, catastrophic at worst.
DeleteThree years ago you could fly BEG-FCO-PSA on ASL/AZ for less than 30k rsd return (still expensive but manageable). Now the closest option is FLR as ITA discontinued PSA which is problematic because:
-ASL is selling BEG-FCO for bellow 90eur at worst due to competition from Wizz, often much cheaper
-ITA occasionally offers a cheaper alternative to regular economy, even on FCO-FLR sometimes. This is not the norm though as the route is weirdly expensive (around 160eur return last time i cheked)
Even if you add the two toghether, its still cheaper than if you try it via ASL website which gives you a price around 40k din on the regular. I have no clue how they reach such high prices
For anyone wondering, the A/C is MSN3911, LY-BJG, lsf Carlyle Aviation - same lessor from which ASL got its newest two A319s (YU-APM/L). I guess any other A319s, if ASL gets them, will also come from them!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if planespotters is a reliable source to see their stored fleet, but it seems they have quite a few A319's and A320's stored. LY-BJG is the youngest. Only a few A320's are under 15 years old.
DeleteIdk, i find them to usually be ok, maybe a little late sometimes when it comes to ASL. Any other sources you reccomend for fleet tracking? Where did you find how many planes they have stored?
DeleteTo your point - you never know, they might still pick up an A320 or two from them, since it makes sense to try to keep number of lessors to a minimum
This is where I got the stored aircraft info.
Deletehttps://www.planespotters.net/airline/Carlyle-Aviation-Partners?refresh=1
Airfleets is ok for tracking fleet info as well.