Aerosvit dumps Belgrade

Kiev – Belgrade flights to end
Aerosvit Airlines, one of Ukraine's two flag carriers, will suspend services from Kiev to Belgrade from June 9. The “Aviokarta” portal reports that Aerosvit will end its 4 weekly flights citing “technical reasons”. Aerosvit introduced flights to Belgrade several years ago, hoping to profit from transit passengers heading to the former Soviet republics and the United States. However, the service never managed to attract large amounts of passengers. An aggressive marketing campaign in Belgrade last year led the airline to increase its 3 weekly flights to 4 this summer, only to be cancelled. The cancellation will be in force until the end of the 2011 summer season. Whether the service will resume during the 2011/2012 winter season remains to be seen. Aerosvit will introduce several long haul flights to Asia this summer.

Since the implementation of the Open Sky Agreement in Serbia in 2009 another high profile national carrier, British Airways, cancelled its services. Due to company restructuring Greece’s Olympic Air also terminated flights to Belgrade only to resume its Athens service this summer. Furthermore, the Czech national carrier, ČSA, is also considering dumping Belgrade as it struggles with its own financial problems. Nevertheless, excluding Aerosvit, Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport is currently served by 17 national carriers, increasing to 18 on June 20 when Croatia Airlines commences 2 weekly flights to the city. The three airlines with the largest share of passengers operating out of the Serbian capital are all national flag carriers – Jat Airways, Montenegro Airlines and Lufthansa.

Comments

  1. Duchess of Shangay09:08

    Still puzzled about BA.
    Still avoiding JU (at all costs).
    Still thinking W6 has insane timing of flights

    Still doing LON-BEG with LH at least three times per year.

    BRING BACK BA! (I know, wishfull thinking!)

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  2. The article isn't that clear on wether the route is cancelled due to weak loads or because of technical reasons OR because of both...

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  3. AirKoryoTU-20410:53

    Makes little sense all in all. I wont belive it till the airline releases an article explaining exactly why they are axing the route. It can't be technical reasons/aircraft avalibility due to the fact Donavia and a few other Ukranian carriers operate for and alongside Aerosvit.

    Maybe it is because they lost a single ERJ-145 at SVO a couple of months ago, if anyone has see a photo of this ERJ it is quite funny indeed! I saw it couple of weeks back wrapped up on the far reaches of the SVO storage ramp.

    CSA is a strange carrier, I mean their reforms are insane! Axing everything from London and Manchester, although introducing flights to Hanoi!

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  4. Stefan11:07

    It is very unlikely that an airline will ever explicitly say that they are axing a route because of poor loads, rather they will use this technical problems explanation. I heard that they have been wanting to axe these flights for 2 years now but their sales agent in BEG managed to persuade them not to. It’s a pity though. It was one of the more exotic airlines in Belgrade.

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  5. I agree with Duchess (as most of my colleagues would, too) - BA was perfect between London and Belgrade.

    I flew Lufthansa again last week, and - again - my luggage was lost along the way. Blame the short transfer times at German airports. Lufthansa should stop accepting check-in luggage they cannot adequately deliver at final destinations.

    JAT is another story. Once they delivered my luggage covered in machine oil, with all contents damaged. Another time, they flew the entire plane luggage-less (everyone lost their luggage). And, just a couple of days ago, they only loaded half of the luggage on the plane. I lost my luggage TWICE in two days.

    Bring back BA, amen.

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  6. Well I guess that it must be their London route that is performing so badly when it comes to customer satisfaction. I never really had a problem with them.
    However if Jat and Lufthansa are not good enough for you, why do you keep on using them?
    There are plenty of other options, Malev, Lot, Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Alitalia...

    As for this, could it be that they are waiting for more A148 to be delivered so that they can replace the E145 currently operating the route?
    I suppose that it must be more expensive to operate the route using Dniepravia or whatever it's called, rather then their own.

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  7. Also did someone notice how many delays there are today in Belgrade?

    It started with the flights that were supposed to arrive late last night. Wizz Air, Austrian and Lufthansa were all delayed. Lot's flight from Warsaw was cancelled and Jat's flight from Dubai is late 6 hours as a replacement was sent out this morning from Belgrade.

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  8. frequentflyer14:36

    Off topic (sorry, but relevant to exYU) - Bombardier clearly have production line spots open in the near term for both props and jets.

    http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/06/06/357452/bombardier-plans-to-cut-back-q400-production.html

    Given the growth for flights exYU will be with smaller planes into the future (>100 seats) as the market is not maturing quickly enough, is anyone in a position to buy more, given discounts may be on hand?
    - OU has 6 Qs (another 2 could be handy - look what profits the last 2 have brought the airline),
    - JP has 10 CRJs but is broke,
    - SkySrpska has never materalised?
    - JU needs new props, but is likely to take AT7s again (but if the price is right...)

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  9. Anonymous20:32

    I have heard many stories saying that some airlines lost someone's luggage and still wonder if the airport is responsible that your luggage gets on the plane or is it responsibility of the airline?
    According to my understanding airport people transfer the luggage from check-in to the airplane. Why is there always blame on airlines?
    I apologize for being off the topic.

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  10. JU520 BEGLAX20:59

    because the airline is responsible for moving your bags from a to b. this jobs are outsourced to airport handling companies, usually there is more than one, so u can choose. don t know if in BEG is only the aerodrom beograd or also others... in zurich we have dnata and swissport

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