Swiss to launch Niš and Dubrovnik service

Swiss International Air Lines will commence new seasonal services from Zurich to both Niš and Dubrovnik during the 2025 summer season. Flights to the Croatian coastal city will be taken over from its subsidiary Edelweiss and run up to five times per week starting April 17 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays with a 112-seat Embraer E190 aircraft wet-leased from Helvetic Airways. Details can be viewed here. On the other hand, flights to Niš will launch on June 30 and operate twice per week, on Mondays and Thursdays, until August 21. It will mark the carrier’s return to the southeast Serbian city after more than three years. Flights will be operated by the 134-seat Embraer E195 E2 aircraft from Helvetic Airways.  Further details can be found here. Swiss first launched year-round operations to Niš in April 2017, which ran until January 2020. It also maintained a limited number of holiday flights in December 2020 and January 2021. In Dubrovnik, the airline previously flew seasonally from Geneva in 2019, 2021 and 2022.

Swiss' Chief Commercial Officer, Heike Birlenbach, said, "We are constantly striving to tailor our flight program even more closely to our customers’ wishes and needs. To this end, we work unceasingly to steadily further develop our range of air services and expand these where appropriate. So we’re delighted to provide our customers with an even more attractive and varied air travel offer for next year’s summer timetable period. The new Swiss service from Zurich to Niš is aimed primarily at travellers seeking a comfortable air travel option for visiting friends and relatives in the region. Swiss will also commence service to Dubrovnik on April 17, 2025. The route is being taken over from sister carrier Edelweiss, and will be served with up to five weekly flights throughout the summer schedules until the end of October". Up until now, Swiss has had a limited network in the former Yugoslavia, serving only Belgrade, Ljubljana, Pristina and Sarajevo. It will become the only airline operating out of Niš to offer passengers a business class product.

For its part, Niš Constantine the Great Airport said in a statement, “Niš Airport continues to bring good news when it comes to air traffic development in Serbia. Negotiations are ongoing with other airlines, and, as is already widely known to the general public, Niš Airport has entered the next stage of its development, which involves further modernisation and a number of construction projects”. The airport had previously said it would focus on attracting new carriers and launching new routes in 2025, after it saw its traffic decline throughout this year. Earlier this month, Serbia's Minister for Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure, Goran Vesić, said discussions were underway with several low cost airlines regarding the establishment of a base at Niš Airport. In addition, the Minister noted discussions were ongoing with Air Serbia for the introduction of a new service from Niš, which would not be subsidised by the state, as opposed to the existing seven which are maintained as part of a Public Service Obligation (PSO) contract.