Air Serbia evaluating Toronto and Miami for Americas expansion
Air Serbia is still in the process of evaluating both Toronto and Miami of becoming its third destination in North America. In a statement to the “aeroTELEGRAPH” portal, the carrier’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said both cities have an equal chance of potentially being added to the airline’s network. The Serbian carrier will introduce a three weekly service to Chicago on May 17 and will boost operations on its New York route to daily from June 18. The airline’s primary goal in the development of its long haul network remains the addition of flights to Beijing and Shanghai. “We opened our service to Tianjin in December. The flights have been profitable from the start, which is why we are currently working on approvals not only to grow this service, but also for flights to Beijing and Shanghai”, Mr Marek said. However, the CEO previously noted that he does not expect for those destinations to be added before the fourth quarter due to the length of acquiring necessary permissions.
Explaining the company’s decision to launch flights to Chicago over Toronto, Mr Marek previously said, “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. 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”.
The CEO said last year that he could imagine Air Serbia operating a fleet of around five wide-body aircraft. However, Mr Marek now says, “As we're seeing at the moment, long haul is doing relatively well, so maybe more jets could be considered”. Air Serbia has short-listed a third A330 aircraft for its fleet. “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”, Mr Marek said last month.
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