Aviogenex premises demolished
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Aviogenex was set up by one of Yugoslavia’s leading foreign trade giants, Genex, in April 1968. It operated its first commercial flight between Belgrade and Dusseldorf on March 30, 1969 with a Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft. Aviogenex clocked up 2.166 hours of flying time and carried 51.178 passengers during its first year. The company grew at a moderate pace, solely as a charter airline, catering for the needs of Yugoslavia’s largest tour operator, Yugotours. In 1983, Aviogenex began modernising its fleet by purchasing three Boeing 727s and later two B737-200s. The airline saw its busiest year on record in 1990 when it carried 633.932 passengers with a fleet of ten aircraft.
The premises of former charter airline operator Aviogenex have been demolished at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, some four years after the company went into liquidation. The airline's employees said, "One of the icons of EX-YU aviation now, physically, no longer exists. Thank you to the Serbian government for its false assurances that it would salvage our Aviogenex, in which we were naive to believe in until the very end". Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, Aviogenex was the busiest charter airline in the country, handling over half a million passengers per year in the late 1980s. However, the carrier fell on hard times following the break-up of the former state, with its single remaining Boeing 737-200 jet grounded at Belgrade Airport, along with 39 employees, which include pilots, cabin crew, ground engineers and flight dispatchers. The company says its privatisation process had been mishandled by the government so as to protect the Etihad-backed Air Serbia. Its employees claim that the state did not want to create additional competition for its national airline. JetVision Balkan from Serbia, GLT Overseas (Middle East) from the United Arab Emirates, Euroswiss Investment Holding from Switzerland and Arctica Airlines from Russia all submitted letters of intent for the purchase of Aviogenex in August 2014, however, the privatisation process never moved ahead.
Aviogenex was set up by one of Yugoslavia’s leading foreign trade giants, Genex, in April 1968. It operated its first commercial flight between Belgrade and Dusseldorf on March 30, 1969 with a Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft. Aviogenex clocked up 2.166 hours of flying time and carried 51.178 passengers during its first year. The company grew at a moderate pace, solely as a charter airline, catering for the needs of Yugoslavia’s largest tour operator, Yugotours. In 1983, Aviogenex began modernising its fleet by purchasing three Boeing 727s and later two B737-200s. The airline saw its busiest year on record in 1990 when it carried 633.932 passengers with a fleet of ten aircraft.
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