TRIP REPORT: Air Serbia, Budapest - Belgrade

TRIP REPORT

Five days in since Air Serbia launched its flights between Belgrade and Budapest, I flew on JU155, the evening service from Budapest to Belgrade. It was a busy Friday evening at Budapest Airport with check-in for Belgrade starting around two hours before departure.

I checked the inbound flight from Belgrade and saw that it departed right on time. Boarding started around 30 minutes before scheduled departure time. An ATR72-600 was being used so we boarded a bus to be taken to the plane. I don’t know the exact load factor on this flight, but I would say it was around 50% full. There were a handful of Asian passengers, a group of younger Hungarians, and the remainder seemed to be people from Serbia.

The crew was extremely polite and consisted of an older female purser and another younger male cabin crew member. Boarding was quickly completed as all the passengers were on the bus that took us to the plane. The aircraft itself, YU-ALZ, was in very good shape and was spotless. The pilot came over the PA to introduce himself and give us some basic flight information and shortly after we pushed back, had a short taxi and were airborne right on the scheduled time. We had some nice blue mood lighting upon departure in the cabin.

Flight time today was just 45 minutes. After we took off, the crew distributed biscuits and water and shortly after offered products from the Elevate bar although there were no takers. The pilot came over the PA to give us some more information about the flight when we reached our cruising altitude and shortly after we began our descent into Belgrade.

We landed ahead of schedule, which was great as we avoided the wave of Air Serbia arrivals from Europe, at which time one can expect long lines at passport control if you get stuck in between a few flights. We parked at gate C5 and were bussed to the terminal. I was the first one off the bus, so passport control was deserted. The whole process took less than 10 minutes (the longest part was walking from the drop off point at the terminal building to passport control). I was surprised to see that bags were already on the carousel. Work on the new baggage area also seems to be nearly completed as I managed to catch a glimpse in between the covers.