Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport saw its busiest November on record, handling 439.094 passengers, representing an increase of 3.4% on the pre-pandemic 2019. It marks the first time since February 2020 that the airport has registered an improved result compared to 2019. The number of commercial aircraft movements during the penultimate month of the year stood at 4.422, up 0.9% on three years ago. During the January - November period, Belgrade Airport welcomed 5.134.427 travellers through its doors, which is still down 10% on 2019. The airport has overtaken its planned target of welcoming five million travellers this year and will likely handle approximately 90% of its pre-pandemic passenger levels.
Generating the growth in November was Air Serbia’s strong performance, solid loads by foreign carriers, as well as Qatar Airways’ wide-body operations. The Serbian airline saw its busiest November performance since rebranding in 2013, accounting for some 200.000 passengers and operating over 2.400 flights from Belgrade. It also launched services to Malta. In addition, Qatar Airways deployed its wide-body Airbus A330 aircraft to the Serbian capital from November 21 and ran two flights in a single day on November 23. Belgrade Airport is expected to see its strong performance continue into December, with two new routes introduced during the month, including Tianjin and Malaga.
During the first half of the year, up until which data has so far been processed, Istanbul was the busiest route to and from the Serbian capital if traffic to both airports in the Turkish city are taken into account, while Zurich was the busiest individual route. A total of 164.479 passengers were handled by Air Serbia and Turkish Airlines on the Istanbul flights, while an additional 38.479 travellers were carried by Pegasus Airlines for a total of 202.958 passengers. Munich was the busiest route operated by a single carrier for the entire first half of the year, with Lufthansa handling 60.347 travellers, just ahead of the Dubai route. Wizz Air’s busiest destination during the six-month period was Dortmund, with 37.058 passengers.
.gif)
There will be 7 daily flights between IST and BEG this summer!
ReplyDeleteLet's hope for Turkish 787s in BEG.
I don't think we will see widebodies for the reason that many routes in Turkey are now becoming scheduled flights so it will reduce the need to transfer via IST.
DeleteIt is a world hub, not a Turkey hub.
Delete* not only a Turkish hub
DeleteWhy is JU avoiding MUC?
DeleteW6 and LH took the whole market for themselves.
DeleteJU should give 3-4 weekly a go.
DeleteGood result
ReplyDeleteDecember should be above 2019 levels as well.
ReplyDeleteLet's go! 2023. is going to be record breaking in every way!
ReplyDeleteI just hope we will get some cool and exotic routes. It would be awesome if we could get flights from Asian cities, like Bangkok, Seoul, Delhi, etc.
Indeed it will be very busy with all the new JU routes. Plus Air Baltic is launching flights and there should be another one or two new ones.
DeleteI'm pretty sure we will get new long haul routes like Beijing and Shanghai
DeleteAnd hopefully we get the remaining new routes which are being launched by Air Serbia today.
DeleteI've read somewhere just recently that once China opens, there will be an unprecedented surge in travel demand, so high that it will be very difficult for the airline industry to keep up with all of it. It was a statement by some of these Gulf airline CEOs, I think.
DeleteIt makes sense. Chinese people have been unable to travel for 3 years but also a huge number of Chinese people living abroad (many of them no longer have Chinese citizenship so they could not enter or those that do have citizenship but did not want to get caught in a sudden lockdown in China) will finally be able to visit their family after 3 years.
DeleteShame Etihad isn't coming back.
DeleteIt would be really cool if Volotea start flying to BEG. BEG needs more leisure companies.
Delete@9.26 will we find out today or tomorrow?
DeleteProbably tomorrow.
Deleteanon @10:47
DeleteWhere would you like to see Volotea fly from to BEG?
So around 5.4 - 5.5 million passengers in 2022?
ReplyDeleteMore. December is bussier than november.
Delete5.7
DeleteNice
DeleteWith so many Russian arrivals, I was expecting Moscow to be more on the top. Clearly shows that LH is also dominant in BEG with FRA and MUC inspite of the JU network. No wonder why they are expanding in SKP soon.
ReplyDeleteThe number of flights to Moscow has halved compared to last year. So it's not logical to expect a larger volume of passengers.
DeleteWhat is interesting is that JU scheduled only one daily flight to Moscow for 2023 summer and all of them on A319.
Delete@9.12 is right. The myth created by the media how JU has "increased" flights to Russia was just a lie of course. Before the war, Aeroflot alone had 3 daily flights to Belgrade with the A321 and often sent wide bodies.
DeleteMany Russian arrivals are arriving via IST.
DeleteMoscow was recently again upgraded to wide-body operations so figures will improve.
What's scheduled for next summer is totally irrelevant and based on current permits issued by Rosaviatsiya.
Munich goes triple daily from march
DeleteYesterday YU-ARC was going to Moscow, that's a capacity boost.
DeleteWould not have guessed that Dortmund is Wizz's number 1 route.
ReplyDeleteI think it is from Skopje too.
DeleteDortmund area has a quite large Balkan and Eastern European community and a busy route since a long time. No wonder why Wizzair are quite successful there.
DeleteDordmund is in the Northrijn west falen area which has a big balkan diaspora.
Delete* North Rhine-Westphalia State.
DeleteNordrhein-Westfallen heißt es ;D
DeleteGenauer gesagt Ruhrpott, der Ar+++ von Deutschland .
DeleteFinally overtaking pre Covid results. Good to see.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see the busiest routes list for the second half of the year when its out. The first three months of the year were really impacted by covid restrictions.
ReplyDelete"Munich was the busiest route operated by a single carrier for the entire first half of the year, with Lufthansa handling 60.347 travellers, just ahead of the Dubai route. "
ReplyDeletewow so that means Dubai was Belgrade's 11th busiest route from JAN-JUN.
FZ are doing extremely well.
DeleteHappy to hear that. I hope it will eventually encourage EK to start its own flights.
DeleteConsidering the first three months were impacted by travel restrictions and corona, this is pretty good.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI wonder what was JU's passenger share will be in 2022.
ReplyDeleteProbably around 50%.
DeleteEncouraging trends
ReplyDeleteWhere will BEG rank within top 100 airports in Europe this year?
ReplyDeleteIn between 80 to 90 range.
DeleteMore likely in 70-80, not all airports had such a strong year
DeleteJU market share in November was 45% meaning foreign carriers performed really well. This is despite them having a record month.
ReplyDeleteReal question is which foreign carrier boosted numbers by this much. It can't be just QR with a few wide-bodies.
Wizz Air probably performed well as well. The stat for the number of aircraft movements which increased just 1% shows that loads on planes were much better.
DeleteTK helped for sure with its 3 daily flights.
DeleteOS increased flights as well
DeleteIf there are no surprises globally, BEG should handle around 6.9 million passengers next year.
ReplyDeleteI believe BEG has the most new route announcements for next year so far
ReplyDeleteIt does. And there will be more.
DeleteI just want to say that this website is my happy place. With all the bad things going on in the world, it's the website I go to every morning to read about the Ex-Yu recovering, getting lost markets back and overtaking competitors that capitalized on misfortunes others. The next step is to see the Ex-Yu aviation to be flourishing!
ReplyDeleteFor sure, I do my best to delay reading it every morning until noon, so that I can see the comments as well. Safe to say, I failed today haha
DeleteWhen talking about ex-yu aviation with my Yugo friends I simply say,
DeleteI know a guy ...
Hahahahah
DeleteDonate if you can! The people running this site deserve it and server costs add up.
DeleteNice to see. Winter should do well for BEG.
ReplyDeleteI hope Wizz Air will start launching some new flights from BEG soon.
ReplyDeleteTwo weekly to Athens could work especially in summer.
DeleteNext time they expand (if ever) they will probably add another German village -.-
DeleteJU has literally berried them with this latest expansion. It leaves them with little or no destinations to launch.
DeleteWhy? Wizz can simply launch some of the routes JU started and kill them on those routes. It did it before with, for example, Hamburg and it can do it again.
DeleteBy now they probably would have discontinued most of those. Just look at their expansion from last winter, not only from BEG but also other airports in the region. They discontinued almost all of those routes.
DeleteCorrect, the last one is HHN-BEG.
DeleteW6 seem to be real struggling with some exceptions, they are growing like crazy in TIA announcing even more routes and increasing capacity in KUT. ex-Yu doesn't seem to be their target at the moment.
DeleteThose two airports have no serious local carrier. Wizz is filling the void.
Delete"I hope Wizz Air will start launching some new flights from BEG soon."
DeleteBecause 42 destinations being added just by Air Serbia over two years is not enough for you? Some people as still stuck in the same mindset "if it's not Wizz I am not going" despite really bad Wizz behavior of cancelling routes at the last moment and prices being similar to competition. Take off your Wizz-coloured glasses and start enjoying other airlines.
17:15 why are you being so harsh? The more options Serbians have, the better. It would be great to have even FR in BEG, but really doubt they will allow them given their big size.
DeleteI don't know how many million times someone has to tell you that no one has to "allow" Ryanair to start flights from Belgrade. As an EU airline (Lauda, Malta Air) they can launch flights from Belgrade to any EU country plus Switzerland and Norway and no one can do anything to stop them. Serbia is a party to the Single European Sky treaty, which the European Comission said Serbia has fully implemented in its progress report this October. The only thing blocking Ryanair is Ryanair and if they think the current fees at Belgrade Airport suit them.
DeleteMaybe the fees are too high then but not seeing new W6 expansions or new FR routes in a big European capital was always very suspicious. Even U2 are ending their Swiss connection in spring. If Vinci and JU are working together, then this is another story.
DeleteW6 has this year increased capacity on all its Belgrade flights by changing its Belgrade based fleet from A320 to A321. They introduced new routes last December and increased frequencies. Unlike in some other cities in the region, they face significant competition in Belgrade. U2 is perhaps cancelling their Swiss connection because of strong competition while having much higher costs than W6. Anyway, I'm glad you realized your myth of someone blocking Ryanair is a fantasy. And no, BEG is unlikely to lower its fees to suit the needs of Ryanair. It is neither desperate for passengers or suffers from a lack of destinations. The same fees apply to all airlines.
DeleteSlowly but surely Belgrade is developing really nicely. I am sure next summer it will be even better.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to Belgrade. Solid growth supported by a solid mix of low cost and legacy carriers.
ReplyDeleteon the picture, why is there a big gap on the building before the letter B of Beograd?
ReplyDeleteFor symmetrics. There is two gap panel between the words Aerodrom and Nikola as well. You can't see it because the image is sideways. If you would look at it straight ahead it would make sense.
DeleteVery good result. I think they could add another half a million next year, if not more.
ReplyDeleteHow did other airports in the region perform in November?
ReplyDeleteAs usual results are almost the same:
DeleteSKG - 5,508,800
SOF - 5,498,964
TIA - 4,439,417 but until end of October
TIA's growth will slow a bit during winter months as many of its routes are seasonal.
DeletePlus Wizz delayed the launch of some routes from Tirana like Oslo.
DeleteAnd people were skeptical they would even reach 5 million this year :)
ReplyDeleteOn those flights to Podgorica and Tivat, I wonder what share of the passengers is by JU and what share is by Air Montenegro.
ReplyDeleteJU has almost completely overtaken the market since Montenegro Airlines went bust.
DeleteI think they should focus on attracting FR or expanding U2 operations. FR could easily do STN-BEG and U2 could do CDG-BEG.
ReplyDeleteWe won't be seeing Ryanair in Belgrade any time soon.
DeleteGood.
DeleteGood result. I expect it will finish the year with 5.7 million.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed by Pegasus having so many passengers considering they are limited to just a few flights per week.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteWhat equipment do they mkstly use to BEG?
DeleteA321neo
DeleteAdmin, is it possible to publish the data for the TOP 30 destinations in the first half of the year?
ReplyDeleteLet's see if VINCI can attract new airlines, this year they weren't as much proactive as I thought they would be.
ReplyDeleteA nice addition would be e.g. TAP. It's also very strange that ITA Airways hasn't resumed the flights yet, Air France is still flying during summer season only, easyJet after Berlin cut their ops to Geneva from January. If it wasn't for JU and their massive expansion every year we wouldn't be able to see many new additions. Next year JU will get bigger market share for sure!
Air Baltic is already announced as new airline next year.
Delete* Bravo Beograd.
ReplyDeleteFor a while the growth will be slowed down due to construction norne ILS CAT degradation. Possible and likely fog would cancel many flights in the coming months.
ReplyDeleteCat3 is downgraded just for 10 days until the 26th.
Delete