Air Serbia to focus on new sun destinations and long haul
Air Serbia will launch up a to a dozen new routes in its upcoming expansion, the majority of which will commence during the 2023 summer season. As part of its growth plans, the carrier intends on putting an emphasis on popular holiday destinations following the success of its new routes to Spain and Italy launched this year, as well as long haul destinations. Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “We will continue to work on expanding our destination network primarily to tourist destinations, which has proven to be a complete success this year”. This summer, the Serbian carrier launched operations to the likes of Palma, Valencia, and Bari.
Commenting further on the carrier’s upcoming network growth, Mr Marek noted, “Plans to grow our long haul network started long before the pandemic. Since introducing flights to New York in 2016 and handling around 400.000 passengers on the route within six years, the service has matured and become profitable. Therefore, we have decided to increase flights to New York this winter season and reduce the marked seasonality. We have also decided to further expand our long haul operations. We have opted for a balanced approach between East and West. However, eastwards expansion is still limited due to the pandemic. Therefore, one route to China will be launched - to Tianjin - with the possibility of establishing services to Beijing and Shanghai as soon as restrictions on the market are lifted”. The CEO added, “When it comes to the West, we will further strengthen our traffic to the USA from April next year by establishing nonstop flights to Chicago. In addition, we will work to further deepen and strengthen our regional network, to ensure good competitivity onto our long haul flights”.
As recently reported, the airline is also planning to introduce services to Havana. As EX-YU Aviation News learns, flights to the Cuban capital will operate on a scheduled basis and launch before the end of the year. “We do not want to return to pre-pandemic levels, we want to surpass them in 2023 at the latest. In some segments, we have already achieved this. For example, this year we have 30% more charter flights than in 2019. Moreover, we surpassed our charter traffic levels already last summer. This is proof that people want to travel and that the demand for holiday destinations is strong. This motivated us to introduce over ten new routes this summer, primarily to popular tourist markets such as Spain and Italy. The results on these routes have exceeded our expectations”, Mr Marek noted.
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