Belarus in talks over Air Serbia flights
The Belarusian Ambassador to Russia, Vladimir Semashko, has said his country is negotiating over the potential introduction of Air Serbia flights between Belgrade and Minsk. It comes over a month after European Union member states, as well as Serbia, banned Belarusian carriers from taking off, landing or overflying their territories following Minsk's forced diversion of a Ryanair flight in June. “In order to meet the needs of people, we are working to attract more foreign air carriers. Such work is being carried out with the national airlines of Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Qatar”, Ambassador Semashko said.
Belarus’ national carrier Belavia maintained flights between Minsk and Belgrade prior to the airspace restrictions. It was quick to restore its pre-Covid frequencies on the route to three weekly, increasing to four weekly rotations over the winter months. In November of last year, Air Serbia and Belavia concluded a Special Prorate Agreement (SPA), which enabled the Serbian carrier to sell tickets to Minsk from any point within its network via Belgrade in partnership with the airline. As a result, the Belorussian carrier was also able to sell tickets for destinations within Air Serbia’s network via Belgrade.
Growing tourism and business ties between Serbia and Belarus had helped boost the performance of the Minsk - Belgrade service, however, Belavia also relied on a significant number of transfer passengers on the route. In 2019, over 3.000 travellers between Minsk and Belgrade were connecting passengers, while in 2020 the figure increased, despite the service not operating for two months due to Belgrade Airport’s closure. In both 2019 and 2020, points in the former Soviet republics were its most popular connecting destinations to and from the Serbian capital. In 2019 these included St Petersburg as number one, followed by Almaty, Moscow, Kiev, Nur-Sultan, Batumi, Kharkiv and Baku. In 2020, Kiev came out on top, significantly ahead of all other connecting destinations. It was followed by Yerevan, St Petersburg, Almaty, Moscow, Kharkiv, Odessa and Nur-Sultan.
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