Air Serbia mulls narrow-body fleet options
Air Serbia is devising a strategy for its narrow-body fleet which has been impacted by growing seasonality as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The carrier has been forced to wet-lease four aircraft this summer, complementing its fleet of ten Airbus A319 and one A320 aircraft. Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, noted that this year’s wet-leases were driven by high demand from tour operators, which surpassed expectations, and were arranged short-notice. "Currently, we are looking into the longer-term strategy because leisure demand is from mid-June until mid-September, and whatever calculation you do, a dry-lease option with the additional crew for three months of operations, that mathematics doesn't work. We are looking either to make some capacity provider agreement on a long-term basis, five-plus years or trying to enter into some Joint Venture agreements with reverse-seasonality operators. But we are also still looking at dry-lease options because currently, the oversupply of A320s on the market means that some of lessors are open to the winter power-by-the-hour model", Mr Marek told “ch-aviation”.
The airline is currently reviewing its strategy for high seasonality, which has further increased as a result of the Covid pandemic, with demand for leisure flights growing significantly. “Over the past year, leisure traffic has become very strong, while VFR traffic [Visiting Friends and Family] remained stable. The one that is still questionable is business traffic. That is why we completely redesigned our network and announced many new destinations this year, which are predominately VFR and leisure-driven”, Mr Marek said. However, this has resulted in increased seasonality, which was reduced in the pre-Covid era through the development of the hub model.
In the short-term, the airline has no plans to renew its fleet of mid-age narrow-body Airbus aircraft, however, more jets of the same type may be added in the future. Mr Marek acknowledged that ultimately, newer aircraft would have to be introduced into the fleet. Since both the A319-100neo and the B737-7 are niche aircraft, the airline could upgauge its narrowbody fleet and then make room for the addition of regional 100-seater jets. However, the carrier’s CEO emphasised this is not a short-term prospect for them for the time being.
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