NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia has added a second wet-leased Embraer E190 aircraft, which will be operated on its behalf by Bulgaria Air. The 108-seat jet is registered LZ-VAR and is twelve years old. It entered into service on Air Serbia's behalf on Monday, between Belgrade and Istanbul. It joins another Bulgaria Air E190 jet operating for the Serbian carrier since June. Air Serbia will dry-lease two 118-seat E195 aircraft as of next month, which will be operated by the airline's own crew. It will mark the first time the carrier will maintain in-house Embraer operations.
So they'll have 4 Embraers operating. How many did they have from Marathon before they stopped the deal?
ReplyDeleteAlso four, while fifth (OY-GDA) arrived in Belgrade but did not operate a single flight.
DeleteThat’s good for Air Serbia. However, BG air is likely to phase out completely the E190s and leave only the A320s and the A220s in its fleet in 2025(even though it would make sense to phase out the 30 years old 737-300s with the ejets, having also so many pilots trained on the E190s and having Embraer simulator at Sofia flight training, than to end their lease, but the BG logic again is brilliant…) So I won’t be surprised if the 4 Ejets end up at Air Serbia’s fleet this time as a dry-leased.
ReplyDeleteIs there proof that they will completely phase out E190s? Or you are just guessing?
DeleteHardly. One A220 is already grounded, not even one year old…
DeleteThey already said that the old fleet will be used for ACMI contracts, so they are most probably covering ther scheduled losses with ACMI - pretty good strategy IMO, similar to that of Adria, with the only difference being they had to wet lease additional planes
DeleteThe others will follow it, same problems like wizz airbuses
DeleteIf it is true. It would be really great for JU to take them on and grow their Embraer fleet as soon as they can. Make their network more efficient for routes that the a319 is too big for and increase frequency where its not big enough. And hopefully take the opportunity to grow. Georgia, Armenia, North Africa etc
Delete11:07 Last year the CEO, when announced the order for the 7 A220s, said that they will return the A319s and the E190/ back to the lessor. But they had to phase out the 737-300s years ago and as we can see they are still flying to and from prishtina as well as covering some charters to antalya from Sof. But yes, it is a guess, but he really said on Bloomberg that they want to fly only A320s and A220s. But with the current huge aircraft and crew shortage, plans may have changed and having available extra planes and crews, they have probably decided to make extra money from ACMIs. I don’t know, this is not a normal airline… only the very good maintenance of planes and pilot training is what they really do well as a real airline. But no comparison to air serbia which does the two main things for an airline excellent.
DeleteInteresting times, so now Plovdiv and Varna LZ-PLO and LZ-VAR are flying for JU. Wonder if LZ-BUR Burgas will join the fleet as well in the future. Even if those planes are a bit older, they are quite reliable
ReplyDelete