Air Serbia outlines regional growth strategy
Air Serbia aims to cover the majority of destinations in the region and progressively add frequencies on all existing routes in the area, with the likes of Ljubljana potentially growing up to 21 flights per week from Belgrade. The carrier’s CEO, Jiri Marek, noted recently, “For us, the region is extremely important and that is why we want to position ourselves as the leading airline in the region. We call it the wider- ex-Yugoslav Balkan region because we want to go beyond the border of the former Yugoslavia. I think we have the perfect aircraft serving this region, which is the ATR. It is the aircraft that has extremely good economics to serve regional destinations. Our strategy is that we would like to cover the majority of destinations in the region. In the former Yugoslavia we already cover fifteen destinations, and we will grow this year to include Ohrid”.
Mr Marek added, “The strategy is to densify destinations step by step and offer multiple daily connections to Belgrade. We are building growth in the region based on the strong point-to-point demand and the transfer demand is on top of that. For example, Ljubljana for us is one of the most important markets in the region. We are almost back to pre-Covid frequencies and in summer we will reach that. We will have eighteen plus flights per week. We still consider that we might even grow up to 21 weekly, which was our number of pre-Covid frequencies, which was a reaction to the collapse of Adria, plus we have two weekly flights from Niš. I believe that this market has potential to be, in very near future, up to four daily flights”.
Commenting on the possibility of basing aircraft at nearby airports, Mr Marek noted, “Everything is possible but is this feasible or reasonable for us or anyone else in the region? I think it is a complex question. We are regularly looking at other opportunities in the region. At the moment, the limitation is obviously that we are not in full open skies, so this would require us to get a European AOC and with that come certain complexities. Due to our aggressive growth, which we aim out of Belgrade, which is our priority at the moment, I don’t see it as being feasible in the next couple of years although we would never turn down any opportunities that arise in the region”.
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