Air Serbia to serve eighty scheduled destinations this summer

Air Serbia will maintain scheduled flights to eighty destinations in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa this summer, overtaking the number of scheduled destinations served by JAT Yugoslav Airlines in its final year of normal operations prior to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. At the time, JAT served 75 scheduled destinations within its network, including 44 points in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, fourteen long haul destinations, and seventeen domestic destinations. The Serbian carrier is making a big leap this summer with the introduction of 22 cities into its network. This will be accompanied by a number of charter flights, primarily to Turkey, but also Egypt and Greece.

The new additions to the airline’s network are said to be selling well, with destinations previously operated as charters being snapped up by tour operators and selling out. Lisbon, which was only recently announced as a new route for the carrier has also seen strong sales. Budapest, which has been allocated the largest number of frequencies among its new routes, reaching a peak of seventeen weekly from April onwards, has been revised down for its March launch. The airline will initially operate ten instead of fifteen weekly services next month. However, Air Serbia noted last week that it will optimise its operations to the Hungarian capital in the beginning but that it “strongly” believes the route will work.

Following the major expansion of its summer network, the Serbian carrier is targeting the densification of its existing services with the addition of more frequencies. The airline has so far already revealed it will be adding more flights to Zagreb, Skopje, Tirana, Pula, Larnaca, Barcelona, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Bologna, Madrid and Dusseldorf this summer, with extra services to be introduced on more destinations in the coming period. “Our expectations for 2023 are high. We plan to carry over three million passengers, with more than 30% being transferred (compared to 25% in 2022). We continue to work on new opportunities to be regularly added to our network”, the carrier’s CEO, Jiri Marek, recently said. The airline previously noted that its aggressive growth strategy for this summer is justified on the back of a strong winter which has operationally performed above all expectations.

EX-YU Aviation News

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