Niš outlines planned new subsidised routes for 2022
New flights of public interest will be established from Niš Constantine the Great Airport next year, according to the City Assembly. The operating carrier will be selected through an international tender. The planned subsidised routes include Hahn, Ljubljana, Cologne and Istanbul on a year-round basis, as well as Tivat and Athens over the summer months. "This list is not final and there is a possibility it may be modified. A task group has been formed by the Ministry for Construction, Transport and Infrastructure to determine potential new routes from Niš. Around 8.5 million euros will be set aside from the state budget to fund the flights", Assembly member, Nenad Stanković, said. All services will operate twice per week. The Mayor of Niš, Dragana Sotirovski, recently noted that the "long awaited" flights to Istanbul would soon be established.
In 2019 Air Serbia won a tender to operate two weekly flights deemed of “public interest” from Niš to Baden Baden, Bologna, Budapest, Hahn, Friedrichshafen, Gothenburg, Hanover, Ljubljana, Nuremberg, Rome, Salzburg and Tivat. The subsidy was valued at five million euros per year and the contract was to run until 2024. However, three months into its launch, services to Budapest were discontinued. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, all routes were suspended. Eventually, only Hahn was reinstated on a year-round basis while Tivat operated this summer. It is believed that due to Covid-19, Air Serbia is no longer able to deliver on its contractual obligations and the deal has been halted, resulting in a new tender next year.
The 2019 tender outlined that the operating carrier must base an aircraft in Niš with the capacity to seat at least 125 passengers. The jet in question could not be over twenty years old. Furthermore, the selected airline was required to have another jet stationed in Serbia. A group of carriers could submit a joint bid. The Serbian government has defined routes of public interest as being eligible for subsidies, as they either lack commercial interest, carry less than 100.000 passengers per year, or are insufficiently served by other means of transport. The aim of the subsidies is to stimulate travel, boost tourism, business links and improve the local economy. Air Serbia’s flights out of Niš are sold at low cost fares. Passengers on these services are unable to accrue miles through the airline’s loyalty program and no business class tickets are sold. During the first three quarters of this year, Niš Airport handled 98.436 passengers, representing a decrease of 66.7% on the same period during the record breaking 2019.
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