Air Serbia eyes Air Montenegro codeshare

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Air Serbia has said it hopes to reach a codeshare agreement with Air Montenegro after the latter was admitted into IATA, enabling it to conclude such deals. Speaking at the Aviation Day South East Europe conference in Belgrade this week, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “As an airline, our strategy is to cooperate with everybody where it makes sense. We are cooperating with Air France - KLM on one hand, Turkish Airlines on the other, as well as Qatar Airways, all of which are from different alliances. Since this is a regional forum, we are very open for expanding regional cooperation. Hopefully, with Air Montenegro becoming an IATA member and holding this status, we hope we can work on a codeshare”. A formal ceremony welcoming Air Montenegro into IATA took place during the conference. Air Serbia and Montenegro’s former national carrier Montenegro Airlines had a wide-ranging codeshare agreement in place. In 2019, Montenegro Airlines codeshared on Air Serbia flights from Belgrade to Podgorica, Tivat, Sofia, Skopje, Sarajevo, Bucharest, Nice, London, New York and Banja Luka, while the Serbian carrier had its designator code and flight numbers on its counterpart’s services from Podgorica to Belgrade, as well as from Tivat to Belgrade and Munich. Last year, the two airlines handled a total of 259.462 passengers on the Belgrade - Podgorica route, as well as a further 283.266 travellers on the Belgrade - Tivat service. Figures so far this year are significantly up on 2022.