Air France discontinues Belgrade service
Air France has confirmed it is discontinuing its seasonal flights between Paris and Belgrade. The carrier had initially planned to maintain two weekly rotations between the two capitals this summer for a month and a half, between July and late August, with a mix of Embraer E170 and E190 aircraft. However, the airline has now said it will redeploy capacity elsewhere with the Belgrade service covered through its wide-ranging codeshare partnership with Air Serbia. At this point, the Serbian carrier has scheduled two daily flights to the French capital this summer, although its CEO, Jiri Marek, recently noted in an interview for EX-YU Aviation News that the carrier was “looking at” increasing Paris to eighteen weekly or even triple daily flights.
Air France introduced services to Belgrade in 2019 following a ten-year hiatus. The route was initially to operate on a year-round basis but was downgraded to a seasonal service in its first year. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Air France did not fly to Belgrade in 2020 but returned in both 2021 and 2022, each year shortening the length of its seasonal operations. Flights were previously maintained four times per week with the A320-family fleet. Mr Marek recently said that Air Serbia can fly between Belgrade and Paris at a lower cost than its French counterpart. “You have to bring the costs closer to those of low cost carriers but offer passengers better service for which you can charge a fee. We see this, for example, on the route to Paris, where we fly twice a day and Air France only four times per week [seasonally]. We have a codeshare agreement with the French, and we are able to bring passengers to Paris cheaper than them, which is beneficial for everyone”, Mr Marek said.
Paris is one of Air Serbia’s busiest routes. In addition to the Serbian carrier, Wizz Air serves Beauvais near Paris, on which it has steadily increased frequencies over the years. This summer, the budget carrier will operate five weekly rotations on the route. This year marks the centenary since commercial flights were established between Belgrade and Paris, operated at the time by one of Air France’s predecessors, CFRNA. Within the former Yugoslavia, Air France will maintain scheduled flights to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Dubrovnik and Split this summer, although the carrier has shelved plans to introduce a second daily service to the Croatian capital.
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