Air Serbia’s turnaround strategy bears results

Air Serbia has seen its busiest January since relaunching operations under its new name in 2013 as a new commercial strategy, introduced last year, starts yielding improved results. The carrier handled 168.858 passengers from Belgrade Airport during the first month of the year, representing an increase of 27% or an extra 36.000 travellers on 2019. At the same time, the airline’s average cabin load factor improved seven points to 69%. Sales of ancillary services increased 44%. Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Jiri Marek, said, “We are pleased to have started a new year by setting new records and to have posted great results already in January which, when it comes to passenger numbers, stands for a weaker month in the airline industry. Last year was Air Serbia’s most successful one so far by the number of passengers carried and new destinations. We are happy for providing firm grounds for further development in 2020”.

Late last year, Mr Marek noted that October was a turning point for the carrier’s new commercial strategy. “Our first big change was announcing nine new routes in June 2019 but we knew that you can’t just announce nine new routes and expect for the revenue to come in. We also had to make major changes to our commercial strategy. October was our first, let’s say, turnaround month. All the KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] you can imagine in the airline industry went positive and many of them in the double digits. Passenger numbers, load factor, capacity, revenue was positive, RASK [Revenue per Available Seat Kilometer] was also positive and that was only the first month. November was even better”, Mr Marek said. The carrier has continued to post improved figures since.

Air Serbia is soon expected to schedule and put on sale up to ten new routes for the coming summer season. The carrier is tipped to introduce flights from Belgrade to Amman, Budapest, Chisinau, Florence, Geneva, Lviv, Oslo, Rostov-on-Don and Valencia, although there might be changes to the final line-up of destinations. The carrier has already increased frequencies on six existing routes for the coming summer, however, a few more changes are possible depending on fleet availability. Air Serbia handled 2.81 million passengers in 2019, with the figure expected to be overtaken this year.