Air Serbia aims for full recovery by 2023
Air Serbia expects to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, the airline’s Supervisory Board has said as its passenger performance and the average cabin occupancy index outpaced the industry average in Europe this year. The Chairman of the carrier’s Supervisory Board, Branislav Pejčić, said, “Air Serbia is rapidly recovering and aiming to achieve 2019 pre-pandemic levels by 2023. As a result, it plans to embark onto a phase of continuous growth as the leading regional airline. The carrier is a symbol of national pride and its continuous success is testament to its dedicated workforce, which has played a major role during the pandemic, enabling the sufficient flow of medical material, vaccines and the safe return of stranded citizens around the globe”.
As part of the airline’s planned growth next year, it will launch six new routes of public interest as of next week. Furthermore, it plans to renew its regional fleet with newer generation ATR aircraft. As EX-YU Aviation News learns, crew members have already started training for the incoming aircraft. Furthermore, the airline is considering restoring more destinations and making new additions to its Belgrade network. However, all plans are still contingent on the epidemiological situation. The company’s incoming CEO, Jiri Marek, who was yesterday named as the sixth most powerful foreigner in Serbia on the annual list, previously noted the airline would further develop its hub and spoke model once the company returned to pre-pandemic passenger levels.
Air Serbia carried over 1.5 million passengers from January until December, an improvement of 76% compared to the total number of travellers handled during the whole of 2020 when the figure stood at 899.877. However, passenger levels are still down 43% on the pre-pandemic 2019, which was Air Serbia’s busiest. Back then it welcomed 2.81 million travellers as it added 23 new routes to its network. The airline’s cabin load factor since the start of the year has averaged at 66%, while in 2019, loads stood at 73%. The carrier has not publicised its financial performance so far this year, with its annual financial result for 2021 not expected to be made public before July of next year. In 2020, the airline recorded a 77-million-euro loss.
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