Bulgaria Air to Belgrade

Soon in Belgrade
The Bulgarian national carrier, Bulgaria Air, will commence flights from its hub, Sofia, to Belgrade this winter. A source within the national carrier has confirmed to EX-YU aviation news that the airline is likely to begin 3 weekly flights at the start of the 2011/2012 winter season. The airline is yet to request flight permits and slots and is expected to do so next month. Originally, Bulgaria Air was to officially announce the route launch earlier this month as the flights were to be operated in cooperation with Jat Airways, however, the Serbian national carrier backed out of the deal at the last minute.

Bulgaria Air has never flown to the Serbian capital but has previously operated within the EX-YU region with flights to Skopje. The airline announced in 2007 that it would begin flights to Belgrade at the start of the 2007/2008 winter season, although those never materialised.

Bulgaria Air was set up in 2002 as the successor to the defunct Balkan Airlines. The airline recently ordered 7 Embraer E190 jets, which will form the essence of its regional network fleet. They are scheduled to arrive in early 2012. In the last 2 years Belgrade has seen the arrival of several new airlines from the region including Malév, TAROM, Croatia Airlines and Adria Airways.

Comments

  1. Anonymous09:02

    Who saw this coming? :)

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  2. Good news I must say. I was wondering when we might have seen an airlink between Belgrade and Sofia.

    Tarom succeeded in Belgrade (unlike Malev), I hope that Bulgaria Air will manage to do the same!

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  3. On a side note, Spanair will be changing their winter timetable to Belgrade.

    Flights on Monday and Wednesdays remain as before, however the ones on Friday will be departing Barcelona at 23:55 with the arrival in Belgrade at 02:20. The return will be at 03:20 with the arrival into Barcelona shortly before 06:00.

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  4. Anonymous09:40

    Good news, air connection between Belgrade and Sofia is needed, that leaves Zagreb as the only regional capital not airlinked to BEG yet. Unfortunately, I would say.
    Congrats to FB and welcome!

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  5. Anonymous10:25

    Where do they fly to? What will be top connections?

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  6. Anonymous11:16

    Also no air link to Prishtina either.

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  7. Anonymous11:37

    Pristina is not the capital of a country. That's why it wasn't mentioned.

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  8. Anonymous13:04

    Pristina is a capital of the Republic of Kosovo. For most of ex YU countries it is a country.

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  9. Leave the issue of Kosovo for political forums and return to commenting the topic at hand!

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  10. Anonymous13:30

    I wonder if they will launch the route with their Atr or with the Avro. Let's hope it's the Atr due to profitability.

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  11. Anonymous15:21

    I wonder why Jat did not decide to code share on this route.
    Tirana is still not connected to BEG.
    I thought Malév was doing OK on the BUD - BEG route.

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  12. No, Malev is doing catastrophically bad on the BUD-BEG-BUD route. The average number of passengers per flight is 30.
    However, due to the proximity of Budapest to Belgrade I suppose that they do manage to break even with the number of passengers they have.

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  13. Anonymous15:44

    ^Nemjee what do you mean with
    "manage to break " ?
    Is this positive or negative ?
    I dont have a clue...

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  14. they manage to break EVEN :)
    da budu na nuli :))
    Ocekivao sam nesto vece. Tresla se gora rodila se Air Bularia :))))

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  15. Anonymous15:51

    Welcome Bulgaria Air !
    Sofia is OK but I hope they will fly also to Varna and Bourgas !
    That could be good for Tourism in Bulgaria .
    Are there a lot of Serbian tourist or not?I have heard before Bulgaria joining EU there were a lot of tourists from Serbia...but thereafter that trend died out!
    Does anybody know ?

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  16. Bulgaria Air has no ATR's. It'll probably operate BEG flights with its BAe 146's.

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  17. Anonymous17:12

    Haha ,what a fail...all that people
    that hope for TAP,Iberia
    or Klm....Air CunniLingus !

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  18. Anonymous17:29

    Last anonymous,

    No one mentioned KLM here. If your knowledge of aviation was any better you would have known that the agreement that they have signed with Jat meant that they can't launch flights between the two cities.

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  19. Anonymous17:54

    Dear Nemjee!
    Please could you show us LF
    of following airlines :
    NIKI,Spanair,Turkish,Tarom,Olympic,
    Adria...
    also LF on their destinations !
    Every other information regarding any other airline of course would also be appreciated !
    Best Regards !

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  20. Don't remember exactly now but approximately their numbers for July were:

    NIKI: 50%
    Spanair: 74%
    Turkish: 65%
    Tarom: 73%
    Olympic: 74%
    Adria, I can't remember.

    I do remember that Spanair's numbers have doubled since last year.

    Jat's routes to LHR, SVO and OHD had a lf above 90%.

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  21. Anonymous19:44

    Loadfactor of Niki is so bad but they will increase flights in winter season ? how can that happen...make no sense !?

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  22. FlyingJack21:07

    @ Last anonymous

    The ongoing Niki's schedule is not that conveniant to either connecting or business pax. Their winter schedule with morning and evening flights between BEG and VIE will defintely attract more transit passengers, plus those who want to fly in and out the same day and heat up the competition on the route

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  23. Anonymous21:34

    Turkish airlines has a lf of 65%.
    Is this good lf or bad ?
    When do you consider a lf good or bad ?This is a serious question !

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  24. Niki's lf has been around 50% since the flights have been launched. I guess that they have been desperate to increase their passenger numbers. Austrian holds more than 50% of the passengers travelling between Belgrade and Vienna which makes sense due to the connecting passengers.

    As for Niki, I suppose that this change to Belgrade is not so much to offer connections in Vienna as it is to cater for the needs of the oneworld alliance members.
    Let's not forget that British Airways withdrew from Belgrade due to low loads, which was true since in October 2010 they had on average 52 passengers per flight!

    Last anonymous,

    The term good lf depends from airline to airline depending on its cost structure. In more complex airlines a higher lf is needed to make a profit. In airlines such as Niki whose basic cost structure is very light, an average lf of about 50% is ok.

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  25. Anonymous09:59

    Bulgaria Air ordered 17 EMB 190? Well done!

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  26. Anonymous10:33

    they ordered 7, not 17.

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  27. Anonymous16:52

    Niki's CLF in July was 70%, average number of passengers per flight was 78.3 according to BEG's official statistics. Also JK recorded CLF nearly 90%.

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  28. Actually it was 78.4 per flight in July whereas the average per year was 58.4, which would make it around 50%.

    Spanair's average passenger numbers were 153,9 per flight. As they have sent their A321 quite often to BEG it's a bit hard to calculate the exact number.
    Also, they have some A320s in full economy config and some with Business Class. They were interchanging them all the time.
    In 2011 their average pax number was 113.

    As i said, i didn't have the papers with me yesterday so that was from the top of my head.

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  29. Anonymous18:11

    Don't worry Nemjee, nobody takes you seriously here.

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  30. @last anonym
    dont be such an asshole! ! !

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  31. Aleks Nikolic18:48

    @ 2nd last anonymous and Nemjee

    Where do you get these statistics? BEG official statistics, where?

    @ last anonymous

    Grow up!

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  32. lol it's cool, it's cool... let him hide behind his little anonymous sign while some of us have the ba**s to post using nicks...

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  33. Anonymous20:32

    haha your so right bro. so are you gonna say where you get the statistics? lol

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  34. I get it as my work is kind of related to that :)

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  35. JATBEGMEL21:09

    i hope the flights do go. would be a nice addition to BEG :)

    off topic quickly, any reason why Sun Adria's F100 (9A-BTE) is in Senegal. I saw it yesterday parked at Dakar Airport, so i took a few pics.

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  36. AirKoryoTU-20401:37

    If I'm not correct, these flights will be charters onboard BAe-146 aircraft. Not year round services.

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  37. AirKoryo,

    I actually think that they will be scheduled flights. Bulgaria Air has applied for flights in 2008 if I am not mistaken.
    They were supposed to be operated with their Atrs at that time.
    Out of the three flights, one was really early in the morning (overnight) and one was late in the afternoon.

    They cancelled last minute and have not mentioned a return to Belgrade since then.

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