Montenegro Airlines announces major network expansion
Montenegro Airlines will be adding five new routes to its network next summer, despite uncertainty over its future as a new government and political establishment takes over. The Montenegrin carrier plans to introduce operations from Podgorica to Kiev, Istanbul Prague and Lisbon, starting March 28, 2021. All are planned to run on a seasonal summer basis. The airline is yet to put tickets on sale for any of the new routes and has so far scheduled only flights to Kiev, which will launch on April 3 and run twice per week, each Wednesday and Saturday, with the Embraer 195 jet, offering 7.076 seats each way between the two cities over the summer. Further flight details can be found here.
The carrier initially planned to commence operations to Lisbon this year, with one weekly flight from mid-June, however, it was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to Covid-19 the airline also said it was considering flights to Istanbul. At this point, Montenegro Airlines will face competition only on flights to Turkey’s largest city, which are currently operated by Turkish Airlines. Elsewhere, Windrose Airlines, which launched two weekly flights from Kiev to the Montenegrin capital last week, is yet to schedule operations to Podgorica for the coming summer season. Czech carrier Smartwings was to introduce services between Prague and Podgorica this year but they were shelved at the onset of the global health emergency. It has not scheduled flights for next year.
The newly elected Montenegrin government, which marks the first political transition in the country in almost thirty years, has not indicated its plans for the heavily indebted and loss-making national carrier. Montenegro Airlines has warned it may be forced to ground its fleet if the state does not provide it with aid. “It is up to us to present members of the new government with the situation in the company and our possibilities, while it is up to them to make suitable decisions. The issue is that we have very little time for all of this, because the airline is in a very complicated situation and we must act immediately”, the carrier’s CEO, Vlastimir Ristić, said earlier this week.
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