Belgrade Airport sees Europe network expansion opportunities

Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport has seen a number of new routes launched this year and is expected to end 2021 with over a dozen new destinations. However, several key European cities remain unserved. The number of routes on offer from the Serbian capital currently stands at 71, just one short of 2019. This has made up for the handful of European destinations terminated by Air Serbia, among which are Helsinki and Kiev, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This year, Belgrade has managed to cover three routes that were within its top twenty unserved in Europe in 2020 - Hamburg, Luxembourg and Heraklion. Several destinations featured in the 2019 list were to be inaugurated last year but were cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. These include Lisbon, Cologne and Florence.

In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, Lisbon was Belgrade Airport’s busiest unserved route on the continent based on OAG data. Wizz Air was to introduce services to the Portuguese capital last summer but cancelled its plans due to travel restrictions resulting from Covid-19 at the time. Previously, the route was operated by TAP Air Portugal for just six months, from July 2014 until January 2015. At the time, an airline spokesperson said, “The route performed well during the summer, but bookings for the winter months were not encouraging”. During the winter season, triangle flights via Budapest were maintained. The Portuguese carrier was also experiencing a chronic fleet shortage at the time and discontinued several other destinations in its European network. Cologne was the second busiest destination lacking a nonstop air service in 2019 and the busiest in 2020. Low cost carrier Germanwings used to maintain flights between the two cities but they were discontinued in 2012. Wizz Air was to introduce flights last summer but shelved its Belgrade expansion.

Common to both last year and the one before was the strong performance of destinations in Turkey, particularly Ankara. Turkish Airlines filed for slots at Belgrade Airport to launch a two weekly service between the two capital cities this summer, however, in the end decided against introducing flights. Notably, the Armenian capital of Yerevan also performed well both in 2019 and 2020, taking into consideration pandemic restrictions last year.

Top twenty unserved European cities to/from Belgrade in 2019