Air Serbia to deploy third wide-body aircraft by July

Air Serbia will add the third wide-body Airbus A330-200 aircraft to its fleet this summer and have it in operation by June or July amid favourable leasing rates on the market. Speaking at the New Air Gateway Conference in Ljubljana yesterday, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “We have short-listed [A330] aircraft so we are doing final approval processes, and we believe, depending on the MRO [maintenance, repair, overhaul] slot and facility, that it might be in operation in June or July”. Mr Marek added, “For us, I call the A330 the ATR of the wide-bodies. It is the perfect aircraft for an airline of our size. It is a very profitable machine, especially with the lease rates we have since Covid”.

Air Serbia’s CEO had previously said the airline would first look to expand into China with the arrival of the third A330, to destinations such as Beijing and Shanghai, and later on in North America, with the likes of Miami and Toronto a possibility. The carrier will commence operations to Chicago this May. Explaining the decision-making process behind selecting new long haul destinations, Mr Marek said, “Whenever we look at long haul we look for demand from both ends of the route plus regional connectivity, not necessarily the European market. Chicago obviously has one of the biggest diasporas of Serbian origin, or even ex-Yugoslav origin, so there will be good connectivity in the region and that’s one of the key factors, what is the share of the point to point versus transfer traffic. Point to point should be the main factor given the size of our airline. So, for us, point to point will always be the key plus the regional connectivity. At the same time, you can’t take a long haul aircraft just for the summer so the seasonality and directionality will always be important. That’s what is sometimes difficult to explain to people, that Toronto has very strong demand in the summer but is very seasonal, even more seasonal than Chicago, and is even more directional in terms of the beginning of the season and the end of the season, and you don’t have so many beyond and behind options where you can tackle this rigorous directionality. You can tackle it in New York, you can deal with it in Chicago, because it is a big hub, and you have cooperation with others. Despite having cooperation with Air Canada in Toronto, this, at the moment, is kind of challenging. We have Toronto on our priority list but in whatever area you look, Chicago was more preferred. What is often overlooked is cargo and Chicago is a very important cargo hub when you compare with Toronto”.

Commenting on the aggressive growth the airline has embarked on, with over twenty new routes scheduled so far this year, Mr Marek said, "There is always a risk, but the question is what you want to do. If you are sitting in the market that is forecast to be the fastest recovering by IATA, which will grow even faster in the future, growth is the only way to stay on the right side of history and not end up somewhere else". Air Serbia started the year off strongly with the airline handling 219.216 passengers in January, up 20.1% on the pre-pandemic January of 2020. During the month, the most popular destinations in the Air Serbia network in Western Europe were Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, London, and Berlin. The top destination in the region region were Podgorica and Tivat, while there was also strong interest for Istanbul, New York and Tianjin, the latter being launched in December 2022 The airline will soon unveil another two routes to its destination network, with the CEO noting that the carrier is awaiting confirmation of slots before putting tickets on sale.

EX-YU Aviation News

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