Air Serbia outlines future long-haul plans

Air Serbia anticipates further growth in the long-haul sector following its launch of flights to Guangzhou in September and its upcoming route to Shanghai, set to begin on January 11 next year. However, the airline plans to concentrate on reinforcing its current schedule first, having recently suspended flights to Tianjin and temporarily reduced its Chicago service to once a week during part of the winter season. In a wide-ranging interview for the “Airliners.de” portal, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “Of course, there is further growth potential for us on long-haul routes in the medium and long term. However, we will first take a close look at the development of our existing routes and then initially focus on increasing the density of those existing routes. But we see it as a natural next step to target one or two more destinations in North America after completing the expansion to China. After that, we will look to the Far East again, either to Korea or Japan”.

Mr Marek noted the carrier’s new service to Guangzhou is performing strongly and is gaining traction with transfer passengers as well. ”Using Belgrade as a hub for transfer passengers brings additional niche business. And that definitely works and accounts for perhaps 15% of the China routes. It is much higher on the New York service. However, the main business remains point-to-point traffic. On all Far East routes, the main demand comes from the Far East, usually 80%. Guangzhou is the largest Chinese hub with excellent connections to Southeast Asia and Australia. We must not forget that there is a strong Balkan diaspora in Australia and New Zealand. Guangzhou is a natural transfer point instead of flying over the Persian Gulf. We are suspending flights to Tianjin in the winter because our group business tends to go to the large Chinese hubs in China”, Air Serbia’s CEO explained.

Air Serbia has previously indicated it is exploring Miami and Toronto as potential new destinations in North America. In the Far East, it is studying future routes to either Tokyo or Seoul. The carrier’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Boško Rupić, recently said the airline is considering introducing flights to Beijing next summer as a replacement for Tianjin, however, he noted it may instead opt to up frequencies on existing Chinese routes, where it maintains two weekly flights Guangzhou in cooperation with China Southern Airlines which also runs a two weekly rotation between the two cities. “We have signed a letter of intent with China Southern Airlines and entered into a codeshare agreement that may develop into a joint venture on these routes. As a result, there are now a total of four weekly flights between Guangzhou and Belgrade, which creates much better connecting opportunities than we were able to offer with our single weekly flight to Tianjin”, Mr Marek said.