Air Serbia adds five new routes

NEWS FLASH

Air Serbia introduced five new routes from Belgrade over the past ten days, bringing the total number of destinations in its network close to eighty. On May 31, the airline inaugurated operations to Heraklion in Greece, previously served as a summer charter destination. “With the introduction of flights to Heraklion, we have expanded Air Serbia’s presence in the friendly country of Greece. During June, we will start operating services to Rhodes, Corfu, and Chania, enabling passengers to reach these popular leisure destinations quickly and easily”, Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Boško Rupić, said. The carrier will compete against Aegean Airlines on the route.

On June 4, the Serbian carrier introduced four weekly flights to Krakow in Poland. It marks the carrier’s return to the Polish market for the first time since 2016 when it served Warsaw, as well as the first time it has operated services to Krakow. “Tourists who love exploring European metropolises will definitely be pleased by our new scheduled flights to Krakow. Now they have the opportunity to arrive in one of the oldest cities in Poland in just two hours on a comfortable Air Serbia flight”, Mr Rupić, said. The carrier faces no competition on the route.

On June 5 Air Serbia commenced flights to Varna in Bulgaria, marking its return to the city after nine years. The carrier will maintain four weekly rotations to the city. Asked why the airline opted to reintroduce Varna following its disappointing run nine years ago, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, told EX-YU Aviation News, “The airline was totally different at that time. We are now putting a lot of emphasis on regional connectivity and the network size which we have built up has become self-sustainable, meaning that whenever you open a new regional destination you have so much to offer that you will create some base load demand. We believe that Varna is a bit of a different leisure destination than the other ones we have opened, because Varna might have some demand from Serbia, but it has a lot of transfer demand. While we have competition via Istanbul, it is backtracking. So, we believe it’s a nice niche via Belgrade”.

Services to the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu were launched on June 8 and 9 respectively. The carrier previously served the two through summer charters. Upgrading a select number of routes from charter to scheduled services is not expected to impact Air Serbia’s overall leisure operations, with the number of charters set to grow by up to 15% this year compared to the record set in 2022.