Air Serbia and Qatar Airways to forge closer ties
Air Serbia and Qatar Airways will establish closer cooperation with the two airlines to soon unveil a wide-ranging codeshare agreement. The Serbian carrier recently said it was in the final stages of concluding a codeshare partnership with a major carrier from the Middle East. Qatar Airways is set to add its designator code and flight numbers on the majority of its Serbian counterpart’s operations from Belgrade, unlocking a number of new routes. Likewise, Air Serbia will add its codes on Qatar Airways’ Belgrade - Doha service, as well as destinations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The Qatari carrier, a member of the Oneworld alliance, currently flies to more than 150 destinations worldwide.
The development marks a major shift for Air Serbia which is formally still affiliated with Etihad Airways, with the latter owning a 16.4% stake in the company. However, relations between the two have been almost non-existent for the past three years, with the Emirati airline decreasing its ownership stake from 49%. Last month, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, noted, “We no longer have any touchpoints with Etihad. We don’t even have a codeshare”. The Serbian carrier is also set to leave Etihad’s loyalty frequent flyer program. “We want to do a proper job with it, so we are taking our time. We don’t want to quickly jump into something and be unable to deliver. There are 692 airlines, so the library of knowledge and experience is big. Therefore, we can innovate and cherry-pick the best idea and once we decide to go our own way, we want to have something that can be trusted and that can be delivered to passengers”, Mr Marek said.
The new codeshare agreement will provide significant feed for Air Serbia on a number of routes including the likes of Ljubljana, Podgorica, Sarajevo, Tivat, Niš, destinations in Italy, Germany and Russia. On the other hand, the agreement will also strengthen Qatar Airways’ operations to and from Belgrade. The route, currently maintained five times per week with the Airbus A320 aircraft, increasing to daily from March 26, is codeshared by Malaysia Airlines, Oman Air, Cathay Pacific, Sri Lankan Airlines and Virgin Australia. Qatar Airways handled 24.799 passengers on its Belgrade flights over the first half of 2022. During the pre-pandemic 2019, Shanghai was the top destination Belgrade passengers transferred to or from within Qatar Airways’ network. It was followed by the likes of Sydney, Melbourne, Bangkok, Hangzhou, Denpasar (Bali), Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Perth in Australia.
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