Air Serbia has scheduled notable frequency growth across its network this winter season, which began yesterday and runs until March 25 of next year. The carrier is set to increase the number of flights in comparison to its original plan from Belgrade to Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Ljubljana, London Heathrow, Milan, Moscow, Podgorica, Prague, Rome, St Petersburg, Sarajevo, Skopje, Stockholm, Tivat, Tirana, Vienna and Zagreb. Furthermore, almost all routes the company launched over the past summer season have been extended into the winter months. They include Bologna, Hanover, Kazan, Lyon, Nuremberg, Salzburg, Sochi and Valencia.
The airline is growing the number of destinations that will now boast the same frequencies or exceed the number of flights which were operated for part of the 2019/20 winter season, in the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic. They include Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Larnaca, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, New York, Paris, Podgorica, Rome, Sarajevo, St Petersburg, Sofia, Tirana, Tivat, Venice and Vienna. In addition, the carrier plans to launch a new one weekly service to Tianjin in December and restore two weekly flights to Tel Aviv in late November or early December. These are yet to be scheduled. Furthermore, the carrier will launch a new two weekly service to Malta, which will be inaugurated this afternoon.
Departing Belgrade
The carrier will continue to maintain two weekly flights from Niš to Cologne, Hahn, Istanbul and Ljubljana, as well as a four weekly domestic service to Belgrade. Furthermore, it will launch a limited two weekly holiday service to Zurich. However, it has said flights could be extended throughout the rest of winter. “We are extremely glad that we can offer our passengers a fast, nonstop service between Niš and Zurich during New Year and Christmas holidays. This way, we will maintain good connections between the largest Swiss city and the south of our country. For now, the flights are seasonal, but depending on passenger interest, we will consider its continuation”, the company said. Over the winter, Air Serbia will also run a two weekly service between Kraljevo and Istanbul.
Departing Niš
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Now that's a decent network.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteVery solid.
ReplyDeleteAnd I remember reading some comments here how most of the new routes from BEG would not survive the summer. So much for that.
ReplyDeleteA lot of airports give subsidies for first year of flights so you keep it in winter. Let's see what sticks next winter season.
DeleteA lot do, but have the listed did?! Let us know if you know or just trolling, cause if the routes survive 1st year, you will find another excuse. Accept that AirSerbia is good company.
DeleteAnonymous 09.54, you need to accept that the Serbian taxpayer is paying for all of these unprofitable routes. There is no way Air Serbia is making a profit on 90% of those routes without government subsidies/ funding.
Delete^ Sure. I like how you know what's profitable and not for them.
Delete"you need to accept that the Serbian taxpayer is paying for all of these unprofitable routes"
DeleteThe same way that the Croatian taxpayer is paying for all those unprofitable routes from ZAG. All 13 of them.
Yeah, OU's situation is truly comforting and something to take as benchmark.
DeleteIncluding all domestic covered by PSO.
DeletePlease spare us your made up nonsense of 90% of routes being unprofitable. You have no insight into their route performance, fare structure, cost structure per route or anything of the sort. Your comment mostly shows desparation to say anything negative as you are unhappy of having an airline with a network of over 50 routes in winter next door. You would rather no airline existed
DeleteThe coverage of routes is impressive. It will be a busy winter.
ReplyDeleteGood network. I'm a bit surprised that some German destinations like FRA is not daily though.
ReplyDeleteThere is strong competition from Lufthansa.
DeleteIt has been six weekly for years (excluding Covid ones)
DeleteYou can have 5 daily to FRA like OU, to feed LH, or you can develop and grow your own network. For me, the choice is clear. For JU as well. Unfortunatelly not for OU.
DeleteI noticed that Lufthansa initially planned to operate 11 to 12 weekly on FRA-BEG but the last time I checked it was 13 to 14. Seems like advance bookings were more than solid. Maybe they were encouraged by KL's reduction of AMS-BEG.
DeleteWe should keep in mind that JU also added Nuremberg and Hanover. So less of a need to transfer via Frankfurt.
DeleteSouthern Bavaria will be a bloodbath next summer with LH bring back their third daily from MUC, Wizz considerably boosting FMM and JU keeping SZG.
DeleteLH has barely cut MUC-BEG this winter meaning flights are performing well enough.
@anon 09:06
DeleteFRA was before pandemic alwasy daily, never 6 weekly.
^ That's not true. It was six weekly and increased to daily only between middle of December until the middle of January. You can see from the other articles with these winter listings.
DeleteI mean from article in previous years, 2019/20, 2018/19 etc...
DeleteYou are right. My bad.
Delete@pozdrav iz Rijeke
DeleteThats the EU uf the 21st century. It s in favor of the large nations and multi nationals. As long this is not changing, no reason for Serbia to join. To many concessions needed and too much paternalism thru centralistic governance. The JU network is shown this evidently
Why is Thessaloniki so low? I remember this route had a lot of frequencies before Covid.
ReplyDeleteYupp, they relied on transfers to/from SKG a lot. 3 flights PW is nothing.
DeleteSKG was in downgrading mode and before COVID, with fares more than 180 Euro and 20 pax on A319. I remember that between 2014-2017 were almost daily flights, and LF was pretty high
DeleteAny particular reason? SKG is great regional market, cheap to operate, there's more to it than 3pw.
DeleteAegean is doing a good job at Thessaloniki? Greeks tends to use "their own"...
DeleteYou can easily get there by car. Greece/Middle East transfers go through ATH. I guess these 3 flights cover the air link need.
DeleteAegean is expanding in SKG really good as a second base and of course Greeks prefer A3 from any other airline.
DeleteSo JU lost to A3 at SKG and that's it?
DeleteNo that's not it. Perhaps they have crew and fleet constraints and decided to focus on other routes where they can earn more money. Try not being so absolutist and not basing all your conclusions on anonymous commentators.
DeleteI get it, if they have more profitable routes then cut SKG and use the planes for more profitable routes.
DeleteSKG is literally booming every summer what do you mean? Also in Thessaloniki there are a lot Greek-Serbians who use these flights too.
DeleteGreat job JU!
ReplyDeleteI think that Dubrovnik with ATR72 could work well in winter.
ReplyDeleteUnless they get some subsidy from the airport, I don't think they will fly to DBV in winter.
DeleteWouldn't SPU make more sense? I think Cluj should be their top priority in terms of regional flying. That destination could come in handy when feeding the rest of their network.
DeleteI really wonder what the results for Varna were like a few years ago. They never even considered coming back on that route. Wonder if would make sense reconsidering.
DeleteWhen Varna operated the last time they had around 20 passengers per flight. Mind you their network wasn't as great and their pricing was disastrous mostly because it was managed by EY.
Delete20 isn't great but it isn't a disaster either on the ATR. If I remember correctly these flights were operated in the midnight wave?
DeleteYup at 00.20
DeleteMuch better than last winter.
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't that difficult.
DeleteIt seems they are still operating a lot of charters. Yesterday they had 3 charters to Hurghada.
ReplyDeleteNice!
DeleteWhich new routes could JU add in the coming years?
ReplyDeleteLIS, BSL, CLJ
DeleteKIV and FLR were announced for 2020 and never launched due to the pandemic, so I think we could see those 2 come in the next year or 2.
DeleteBUD was tipped for a summer 2020 relaunch, however never made the final list. I think we will see BUD at some point relaunch.
In the next couple of years I see: ADB, EVN, MAN, LGW, AGP, SVQ, VAR, KRK, LIS, TBS, GYD, SVX, CLJ, JED, CGN, YYZ.
With YU-ARC now painted I am guessing Tianjin will be scheduled sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteYes, it should be.
DeleteBravo to JU for increasing flights in winter to busiest airport in Europe and 2nd busiest airport in the world in terms of international passengers.
ReplyDeleteThey have increased Tivat by a lot. It used to be 7 weekly pre-Covid. (in winter)
ReplyDeleteBefore they had a strong competitor called Montenegro Airlines before. Air Montenegro is now a joke. Because it is not a member of IATA and has other limitations, Air Montenegro has no connecting passengers so it can only handle point to point traffic. Basically JU has taken all of the connecting pax.
DeleteTrue. Air Montenegro doesn't stand much of a chance on these routes.
DeleteAre they still wet leasing planes because of a shortage of aircraft or are they operating only their own planes?
ReplyDelete1xA319 still flies in wet lease.
DeleteSure winter is good but I think next summer is going to be wild in Belgrade. I expect even more demand with the economy remaining stable.
ReplyDeleteNoon wave is going to be more than solid with the addition of Vienna and Rome flights.
I agree. We got a taste of what is to come the other day and I doubt that will be all we will see from the increased frequencies.
DeleteAround mid-late December the new route rumours for the next summer season go into full swing, with JU announcing them around mid-late January. With the announcements so far, it'll definitely be interesting.
DeleteImpressive in regional terms. Looking forward to next summer. Hopefully there won't be another mutant virus or WW3.
ReplyDeleteThey are missing routes to the East of Europe. Ok, obviously the situation is not great at the moment but in the future they could think about the Baltic and Poland.
ReplyDeleteAir Baltic beat them to it. They are starting flights next summer.
DeleteIt's highly likely they will codeshare considering they already have codeshares on some other routes.
DeleteThey could bring back BUD. Short flight, low operating costs and many legacies have been cutting flights there. Last month they lost their connection with New York with LO. JU could profit from this.
DeleteThey should give BUD another try. Before Covid, in 2020 LOT was planning to do that with a BUD-BEG flight to connect onto their long haul flights.
DeleteImpressive network in EUR
ReplyDeletePrague doing nicely!
ReplyDeleteI can imagine passengers on this route can rejoice with the ATR72-600s now flying.
DeletePrague was always a solid performer. It was the first destination Air Serbia ever boosted. I think it was in summer 2014 and it went from 7 to either 9 or 10 weekly flights. Nice to see it growing once again especially since OK is as a good as dead.
DeleteIt would be nice to see the A319 replacing a couple of the ATR rotations. ATR on such a long sector surely isn't fun.
DeleteIt just got boosted to 6 pw but still with ATR.
DeleteNice to see an airline growing and developing and also having some kind of vision and strategy.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteBarcelona must be performing really well. They kept it at the same frequency as this summer and next year it goes to 9 weekly as was reported recently.
ReplyDeleteIt was avoided by Wizz too.
DeleteOnly Vueling used to fly this route. Ironically they never actually made it work on a broader basis outside of summer.
DeleteOne of the biggest mistakes of Wizz in BEG is ignorance of leisure destinations. Coming as third competitor on market such as BCN speaks a lot about their network managment.
DeleteOn the same way as they earlier ignored BCN now they do the same with LIS.
DeleteThey don't want to invest in launching any new leisure destination. They'll wait for some other to introduce it and then will come to conquer. Just look at Larnaca, Nice, Barcelona, even Greek destination were well established through charters. Unlike Ryan, Wizz doesn't invest in heavy destination promotion. They are after gasto market.
DeleteATH is performing that good ?? 10weekly flights and there’s also Aegean on the route.
ReplyDeleteAegean also kept the same number of flights as this summer and on November 2nd they are sending the A321.
DeleteAegean should increase to daily in my opinion they offer great connections to Middle East area.
DeleteRome looks like under performer. All other frequences look at least decent and many are quite good.
ReplyDeleteLjubljana should be getting either early morning flights (to catch morning beg departure wave) or midday flights - especially with the new atrs the service is similar to LH with much cheaper fares
ReplyDeleteThis is better than plain "not bad" but I guess we all have different reference frame.
ReplyDeleteI still don’t understand the logic why there is no Thursday (evening) flight to FRA but a Monday evening followed by Tuesday morning plane where they are in direct competition with LH. Thursday was always full in Summer season.
ReplyDeleteFully agree with you.
DeleteMany people would take Friday off and use the flight on Thursday evening. Much more than on for example Wednesday.
This is a lot more than 13, like nearly 4 times more.
ReplyDeleteDear admin, these maps the more routes they have the more unreadable they are, maybe you should consider another approach.
ReplyDeleteEspecially the INI KVO map, I even know what the routes are but the map is so unreadable it's impossible to see anything. Lines are too thick
More then 300 PW comparing to last winter season where we had 150 PW. Impressive
ReplyDeleteVery nice photo!
ReplyDeleteLarge increase in routes and flights will help Air Serbia but also Belgrade airport break new passenger records in 2023. If things continue this way BEG will go beyond 2019 numbers and probably go over 6.5 million next year.
ReplyDeleteThe first JU's return flight from Malta to Belgrade was redirected, such a shame. Apparently the both arrivals and departures at BEG are on hold since 5 PM, hopefully it's not a bomb threat !
ReplyDeleteThere was a bomb threat this morning but that's not the reason. The main electricity supply line was cut by accident this afternoon during the construction work. It won't be before 8pm that planes will be able to depart/land.
DeletePUY will also see 3 pw flights on the ATR starting 23.12.2022 until 06.01.2023.
ReplyDeleteWould of been great to see SPU added as well.
Actually I see the last flight will be on 09.01.
DeleteQuite unexpected.
Smart move, I like this.
DeleteTotally useless desire, but I want GVA back to put my Platinum Etihad Guest status to good use.
ReplyDeleteI am fed up with baggage policy on EasyJet or transfers in Munich or Zurich.
The way easyJet is going, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pull out of BEG. In that case, JU would probably be back on the route.
DeleteWill they ever fly to Finland ever again?
ReplyDeleteIf AirBaltic starts fine I can see Finnair launching BEG soon
DeleteWith Finnair's network getting decimated it seems quite unlikely
DeleteWhat happened to other long-haul flights? There were talks about the Belgrade-Havana service starting from the winter season. What happened?
ReplyDeleteWhat others? Only one was talked about in addition to Tianjin and that was that they are considering Havana. Serbia has in the meantime introduced visas for Cubans due to EU preassure. It won't go ahead.
DeleteOther far away datinations that are popular among the Serbian tourists such as Bangkok, Bali, etc.
DeleteI found two articles mentioning this sk feel free to take a look:
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2022/08/belgrade-airport-readies-for-new-long.html?m=1
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2022/08/air-serbia-to-tap-into-long-haul.html?m=1
Amazing news!
ReplyDeleteWhen is flight to Tel Aviv going to be announced?