Aeroflot further delays EX-YU flight resumption
Russia’s national carrier Aeroflot has delayed the planned resumption of flights from Moscow to Ljubljana and Tivat until April 30 at the earliest as authorities have not given the go-ahead for services to Slovenia and Montenegro to resume. Operations were initially scheduled to restart on March 28 after more than a year. Flights to Zagreb were not scheduled to resume in March and the route’s fate remains unknown at this point. The Russian carrier has only restarted services to Belgrade out of all the former Yugoslav markets. Flights are capped by the Russian government at two per week per operator. Both Russian and Serbian citizens can enter each other’s countries with a negative PCR test. Russia has so far only allowed the resumption of flights to twenty countries.
In late 2018, Aeroflot launched daily services from Ljubljana to Moscow and saw excellent results on the route, increasing capacity shortly after the launch and scheduling two daily rotations for the 2020 summer season, however, those never materialised due to the Covid pandemic. In 2019, a total of 72.498 passengers flew between the two cities. On the other hand, Russia is Montenegro’s largest air travel market. In 2019, 631.571 passengers flew between Moscow and Tivat alone, with Aeroflot, S7 Airlines, Ural Airlines, Red Wings and Yamal all serving the route.
The resumption of flights between Moscow and Belgrade has resulted in a travel boom between Serbia and Russia. Tour operator TUI Russia noted a surge in bookings to Serbia immediately after the restoration of flights in October. “Serbia has never been in such demand before. And the New Year holidays were sold out quickly. The most popular destination was the Kopaonik mountain resort, which accounted for about 70% of all sales to Serbia. The resumption of additional flights to Belgrade from April will reduce the cost of airfares”, the tour operator said. Last Sunday, Russia’s Nordwind Airlines commenced flights from Moscow to Belgrade, becoming the third carrier on the route. Aeroflot continues to upgrade its capacity on the service, deploying the wide-body Airbus A330-300 aircraft between the two capitals on one of its two weekly flights for most of December and January. On the other hand, Air Serbia, limited by the two weekly flight cap, has operated numerous charters to Moscow, on occasion using its wide-body A330-200 as well.
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