Air Serbia becomes largest airline in EX-YU this June
Air Serbia will maintain the most flights this June out of all the airlines operating across all former Yugoslav markets. The carrier has scheduled a total of 1.652 flights (return service included) ahead of Croatia Airlines with 1.444 and Wizz Air with 1.220 operations (this includes Wizz Air Hungary, Wizz Air UK and Wizz Air Abu Dhabi). In addition, the Serbian carrier plans to operate a number of charter flights to Egypt, Greece and Turkey during the month. The carrier recently noted the gradual relaxation of travel restrictions has resulted in increased demand, with the airline to restore service to three destinations this week, as well as launch new flights to Rostov. Gradually, Air Serbia plans to reintroduce more routes during the month.
At this point, the airline has 196.304 seats on sale on scheduled flights for this June. Tivat will become the busiest route for the Serbian carrier next month, with 103 flights planned each way between Belgrade and the coastal city and a total of 23.628 seats on sale. In terms of capacity, it will be followed by Zurich, with Switzerland recently relaxing entry requirements for its residents and citizens arriving from Serbia, then Podgorica, Paris, New York, Moscow, Tirana, Istanbul, Athens and Larnaca. Overall, during the month, the Airbus A319 will be the most utilised aircraft type in its fleet with 970 flights, followed by the ATR72 with 550, the A320 with 92 and the Airbus A330-200, which will run a total of forty operations.
The coming month of June will also see Air Serbia restore an additional two routes to Russia and launch operations to Rostov, its fourth destination in the country. Commenting on these developments, Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Jiri Marek, said, “If you want to be a successful regional carrier you cannot concentrate just on the region because if you develop proper frequencies in the region you need to also look at what you will fly beyond the region to offer connections. We serve the majority of the European markets and we were also looking for some niche outside of our natural catchment area. Russia for us is an interesting example of that”. He added, “Not only can citizens between our two countries travel without visas but also, for example, Krasnodar, which was a success story for us in 2019, did not have a lot of connectivity to the region and Europe. At the time, you either had the option to fly via Istanbul or Moscow, where Moscow is in a way a bit of a backtrack. So, Krasnodar turned out as being very successful. That’s why we were planning to launch Rostov in 2020 before Covid, however, we had to cancel that. But now we have been able to announce it, not just because it was in our plans but also because we see immediate opportunities there because operations to Russia are now very restrictive and it is not easy to get permission to fly there. Turkish Airlines, which served Rostov and Krasnodar, with the latest developments had to suspend flights. Recently, Montenegro announced there would be no PCR test required for Russian citizens and Montenegro and Greece have also been popular with Russian tourists. They still can’t enter Italy, France and Spain which were their main markets. So, we saw an opportunity there, designed the schedule so we could connect these flights to Montenegro, Greece and Cyprus and we strongly believe it will work”.
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