Air Serbia secures Shanghai traffic rights
Air Serbia has secured rights to launch operations between Belgrade and Shanghai, but the airline has said it is only the first in a series of steps required before introducing services to its second destination in China. Speaking at the Asia Connect Digital Air Travel Conference in Belgrade yesterday, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “The next wave of expansion for us is China. Tianjin proved to be profitable from day one and it has high load factors, so we are continuing to operate to Tianjin. Recently, we secured traffic rights to Shanghai but in China you must go step by step. Once you have traffic rights, you must go for the slots and so on. Therefore, this is only one step closer to Shanghai being the potential next destination. We are also looking at Guangzhou, Chengdu and some other opportunities as well”.
Mr Marek said he would like the airline to grow faster within the long haul sector, as it prepares to inaugurate Chicago as its third far-away destination next Wednesday. “In respect to long haul, we would like to grow faster, but the supply chain is not able to follow. During the last conference [New Air Gateway to Europe] in Ljubljana [in February], we were very close to signing the deal for the third wide-body that was supposed to come in July but then issues with the supply chain started to come up. We are still in negotiations, and we hope that by Q4 we might have the aircraft, so then the fourth one might come faster because of this delay”, Air Serbia’s CEO explained.
China remains the number one priority long haul market for the Serbian carrier. “We want to stay on the path of profitability. At the moment, Chinese routes are high priority. When it comes to North America, after JFK and Chicago, the logical choices are either Toronto or Miami. We are looking into that, but it will only come after China. As a result of Covid, long-term and mid-term planning does not exist anymore. Before Covid, when you decide to launch a new route, you make a long-term plan and usually the golden formula was that by year three the route should be profitable. Now, bookings and demand have changed so dramatically that you put the route on sale and many times it’s profitable from day one. It happened to us with Tianjin, Malaga in winter and now that we launched Lisbon, tickets were sold out in two weeks for the next three months. A lot of these things changed, and it is all down to flexibility and agility and how you react to those opportunities”.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Shanghai was Belgrade’s busiest unserved long haul route. This is in part because the largest portion of Chinese nationals residing in Serbia have their origins in two provinces south of the Shanghai region. Belgrade is currently linked to two Chinese cities. In addition to Air Serbia’s weekly Tianjin service, Hainan Airlines maintains two weekly rotations from Beijing, with frequencies expected to be further increased in the coming months. Air Serbia has said it is working with Hainan Airlines to conclude a codeshare agreement.
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