Air Serbia’s leisure operations overtake pre-pandemic levels
Air Serbia will carry more passengers and operate more leisure charter services this summer season than during the pre-pandemic 2019. The airline initially planned to run some 800 charters but now has over 1.000 leisure operations planned for the coming months, with more contracts expected to be signed. As a result, the carrier is wet-leasing additional capacity with a Smartwings Boeing 737-700 aircraft (registered OK-SWT) expected to arrive in Belgrade this Thursday. Air Serbia is operating the most charters to Egypt, Turkey and Greece but has now also signed contracts for services to Monastir in Tunisia, as well as Mallorca in Spain.
Commenting on the developments, Air Serbia said, “In comparison, we operated 299 summer charters in 2020, while at this very moment we already have more flights planned than we operated in 2019 as well, or before the coronavirus pandemic, even though that year was a record breaker for us on all fronts. In May we handled over 100.000 passengers, an increase of around 50% on the month before, or 100% on March, and that’s excluding charter operations, which have now begun”. The airline’s most popular routes continue to be its scheduled services to Tivat, Podgorica, New York, Moscow, Athens, Zurich and Istanbul.
Air Serbia noted the three new routes it launched over the past twelve months, during the covid era, which include Oslo, Geneva and Rostov-on-Don, are performing well. “Our Oslo service sees a lot of transfer passengers continuing onto our regional destinations. Recently we have seen a significant increase in transfers from Russia, since we maintain operations to Moscow, St Petersburg, Krasnodar and Rostov. These are primarily holidaymakers heading to Turkey, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia, but also some Western European countries as well”, Air Serbia said. It added, “Due to relaxing travel restrictions and the fact that many of our citizens delayed their holidays last year, there is a lot of pent up demand. We expect a further increase in holiday traffic, as well as transfers from the region, to Spain when we restore operations to Barcelona in July”.
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