Air Serbia to grow fleet, hires 120 new crew members
Air Serbia has hired over 120 new cabin crew members and will take delivery of the first of several aircraft in the coming weeks to support its aggressive expansion plans. An Airbus A320 jet, which will carry the registration YU-APS, is expected to arrive shortly. The aircraft, which is twelve years old, has already been painted in the airline’s livery. It will become the carrier’s third jet of the same type. Furthermore, the airline is expected to take delivery of an ATR72-600 next month, followed by another turboprop in August for a total of seven. Air Serbia had previously said it is also exploring the possibility of leasing an additional A319 jet, while it has short-listed its third Airbus A330-200, which should be arriving this year.
Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, recently said, “This summer I would say we will have 28 to 29 aircraft and in terms of wet-leases we would expect four to five A320s or Boeing 737-800s and maybe one A319. We want to grow the airline constantly, adding from two to three aircraft every year. Some years maybe more, some years maybe less. On top of that, we will renew existing aircraft, so this is just growth we are talking about”. Commenting on the wet-leases Mr Marek previously explained, “We use wet-leases for two things. One is to cover the summer peak. It is also less risky for growth because if any kind of external worldwide effect happened, you can easily just end the wet-lease because the dry-lease is longer-term. We are also using the wet-leases to bridge before finding the right aircraft on the market. We want to capitalise on the market trends. So, if there is a good aircraft on the market at the right rate, we will be taking it any time it appears, and we will cover the bridge period with the wet-lease”.
In preparation for the peak of the summer season, Air Serbia has hired 123 new cabin crew members out of the 800 which had applied to its recent job opening. “As a result, Air Serbia has selected enough candidates to cover the entire summer season, when a large increase in the number of destinations, fleet expansion, and growing frequencies are all expected”, the carrier said. Air Serbia inaugurated flights to Tel Aviv and Ankara last week, while it will be introducing services to Catania, Lisbon and Izmir this week. A further nine destinations will be launched in May and another seven in June.
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