Air Serbia to maintain wet-leased capacity over winter
Air Serbia plans to continue wet-leasing aircraft over the upcoming 2023/24 winter season despite growing its own dry-leased fleet as it charts out one of its busiest seasons to date. Under the wet-lease arrangement, carriers provide their own aircraft, crew, maintenance support and insurance on behalf of Air Serbia. This winter, the Serbian carrier plans to wet-lease two units from Romania’s Dan Air, including a 144-seat Airbus A319 and a 180-seat A320 jet. Furthermore, it will continue wet-leasing two 186-seat Boeing 737-800s from Lithuania’s KlassJet. The Serbian airline also plans to sporadically utilise a 180-seat Airbus A320 from Germany’s LEAV Aviation. The aircraft is currently only scheduled on an average of seven flights per month, primarily to Istanbul and Milan, deployed on services towards the end of each week.
Air Serbia will continue to wet-lease Embraer jets from Greece’s Marathon Airlines. Both the 100-seat E190 and the 118-seat E195 aircraft have proven popular with passengers so far and useful in bridging the gap between the ATR72s and the Airbus A320-family fleet. A second E195 from Marathon Airlines is also expected to operate on the Serbian carrier’s behalf. Unlike the othe
r wet-leases, the Embraer’s feature either the full Air Serbia livery or titles and are expected to eventually be dry-leased by the Serbian airline. “We'll see how these planes perform. If it turns out that they perfectly fill the gap between ATRs and Airbuses, we will keep them”, Air Serbia said recently.
Wet-leasing equipment has also drawn criticism from passengers, some of which have complained of inconsistent on board service and product. The Serbian carrier does not sell business class on wet-leased equipment, which, due to operational changes, has on occasion resulted in passengers with purchased business class tickets being downgraded to economy as a result of equipment swaps from dry- to wet-leased aircraft. However, the airline has said its strategy of wet-leasing planes has proven successful as it enables it to more easily respond to volatile market conditions without committing itself to extra capacity, which might not be required in the future.
During the first month of the winter season, this November, destinations which will see the most wet-leased equipment are Frankfurt, Vienna, Zurich and Tivat, where the Serbian carrier will be utilising the Embraer fleet to significantly boost frequencies. The wet-leased A319 will be most commonly used to Dusseldorf, while the B737-800s will be deployed most commonly to Stockholm and Zurich. Overall, Air Serbia will have 433 departing flights utilising wet-leases, more than half of which will be the Embraers.
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