Air Serbia eyes summer expansion
Air Serbia plans to introduce several new routes this coming summer season from its hub in Belgrade if epidemiological circumstances permit. The airline is expected to announce new additions to its network in the coming period, which will join the four new routes introduced from Niš and Kraljevo earlier this month. The Serbian carrier has already outlined it will resume services from Belgrade to Madrid, Venice and Nice, which have been suspended since the start of the pandemic, and will increase its frequencies to Rome and Milan to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, it plans to restore seasonal services to Rostov-on-Don introduced last year.
Apart from Rostov, the Serbian carrier has launched flights from Belgrade to Oslo and Geneva since the start of the pandemic, although the latter has been terminated. In the summer of 2020, the airline was to commence operations to Amman, Florence, Lviv, and Chisinau, in addition to Geneva and Rostov. Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, recently said the company plans to continue developing its hub and spoke model, linking the region with the rest of Europe, and will put a greater emphasis on Central Europe as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. “Prior to the pandemic, we announced Lviv as a new destination in our network. We are carefully looking at potential routes in Bulgaria and Romania. Prior to Covid-19, Chisinau was also considered, so we will continue this regional development”, Mr Marek said. He added, “As for Poland, we would most likely be interested in launching our own service from Belgrade to one of the airports in the south of the country, perhaps to Krakow”, Mr Marek said.
In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, Lisbon was Belgrade Airport’s busiest unserved route on the continent, followed by Cologne, Manchester, Bologna, Trieste, Malaga, Krakow, Valencia, Dublin, Luxembourg, Catania, and Vilnius. Since then, services to Luxembourg have been introduced by Luxair and are codeshared by its Serbian counterpart. Belgrade Airport’s Chief Commercial Officer, Miodrag Mirković, recently said, “Central European markets play an important role in our current route development strategy”. Although Air Serbia is still in the process of drafting its 2022 summer network and the ongoing pandemic continues to have a serious impact on the aviation industry, the airline has said it has “big plans” for 2022, which includes the addition of ATR72-600 aircraft.
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