Air Serbia seeks Guangzhou permit, eyes South Korea and Japan
Air Serbia is working on securing permits for flights to Guangzhou in China after doing so for Shanghai and is considering services to South Korea and Japan for future expansion in Far East Asia beyond China. Speaking to the “TangoSix” portal, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “We are currently in the process of finalising our third wide-body aircraft and as soon as that aircraft comes, we will continue our expansion towards China. We have secured traffic rights for Shanghai, and we are working on traffic rights to Guangzhou. We will serve one of two. Wherever we manage to secure slots first will be the one we will expand to next. Once we expand to these cities in China, we will most likely add another destination in North America and, in the near future, we will also look beyond China in the Far East, most likely South Korea and Japan”.
The CEO noted the airline has a number of destinations on its list which it wants to serve in the future. “In terms of destinations, at the moment, we are aiming to have over eighty operating this summer. However, as noted before, we are very flexible and agile to react to any opportunities and as soon as we have a sufficient number of aircraft and no constraints on that matter, we will be able to add even more destinations which we have in the pipeline”. He added, “In terms of the narrow-bodies, our core strategy is to phase out the Airbus A319 and go for the A320s. However, currently, there are some interesting options on the market with A321s so we will maybe fastrack and consider taking the A321s on dry-lease already this summer. But it very much depends on the volatile market. We will also continue to expand our ATR72-600 fleet”.
The Serbian carrier introduced flights to Chicago last week, which the CEO says are performing above the airline’s initial expectations. “Chicago was always on our radar when we analysed the business case, but it was not sufficient to take an additional aircraft just because of this route because we didn’t know how demand would react in the initial stage. So, it was natural that when we were planning our China launch, which was still restricted by Covid measures, we would combine it with Chicago. It was the right choice because initial demand exceeded our expectations. From June 12 we will already be on three weekly frequencies. The flights are developing quite well, so most likely next year additional frequencies will come to this route as well”, Mr Marek explained.
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