Airbus fleet rollout plans revealed
Air Serbia has begun preparations for its major fleet transition this winter, as the carrier switches from the Boeing 737-300 after 28 years of operations to the Airbus A319. Over the weekend the airline began advertising employment opportunities for new pilots for the A319/A320 aircraft. Furthermore, the Serbian government recently approved the deposit payment for the first five A319s. The arrival of the jets will impact on the airline’s network expansion. By the end of the year, Air Serbia will launch flights to Abu Dhabi (October 27), Banja Luka (December 1), Prague (December 1), Bucharest (December 9) and Ljubljana (December 9). Flights to Budapest, Beirut, Cairo, Varna, Kiev, Sofia and Warsaw will be launched later on as more aircraft arrive.
As it currently stands, the first A319 in the Air Serbia fleet will make its debut this winter season on Sunday, October 27, on the morning service to Moscow. Despite recent rumours that Air Serbia will relocate to Domodedovo Airport, the airline will keep in with tradition and continue operating to Sheremetyevo Airport. The A319 will also begin operations on the Abu Dhabi service on October 27. Selected flights to Copenhagen will be served by the new aircraft from late October as well. Throughout the winter season the B737s will be phased out. In November, services to Zurich, Thessaloniki, Larnaca, Paris (both daily flights), Athens, Dusseldorf and Berlin will move to the A319. The transition will continue in December as Stuttgart, London Heathrow, Rome and Tel Aviv (which will operate on a daily basis without the current stop in Larnaca) are all upgraded to the A319. A few days before the New Year holidays, passengers on flights to and from Milan, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Frankfurt and Brussels will get to enjoy the new A319s as well.
The first EX-YU city (other than Belgrade) that will be served by the Air Serbia Airbus aircraft will be Podgorica in November, with one of three daily flights this winter operating with the new jets. Next in line will be Sarajevo. The Bosnian capital will be served by an ATR in the first half of winter but will be upgraded to a B737 later on, before moving on to the A319 in March 2014. Athens, Moscow, Paris, Vienna and Zurich will all be served twice daily this winter season.
Comments
By the way, do you happen to know the frequencies or the times of the Larnaca flights?
It will be interesting to see if all frequencies will be operated by an A319 or will some stay with the Atr.
See you in six months.
When will we be able to see the winter flight schedules for destinations served? It seems that flight numbers have changed as well and that Eastern Europe went from JU1XX to JU6XX range.
Best regards from Novi Sad.
If they are eventually crushed in Belgrade it's not the end of the world. Once the economic situation improves, I am sure Aegean could step in. After all, they have been expanding this year and their financial performance has improved.
My competencies lie with airline management within the region though. I'd love for this model to work, but based on the new destinations mentioned, I don't have much hope it will. Good luck in any case, I'd be happy for Air Serbia to be a success story.
Will the flight Belgrade-Gothenburg make a stop in Copenhagen like usually?
Will there be significant changes in JU flight numbers?
Best regards from Novi Sad.
Actually Olympic is already underperforming. JU has had more passengers than them in June, July and so far in August. Greeks prefer flying the jet engine 737 than the propeller Dash.
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Everybody does. That´s why many people avoid JAT on Montenegro routs, although there are some JAT´s TIV flights opperated by jets. JAT/Air Serbia needs hardly any ATR or Dash in its fleet, since the people in the Balkans psychologically don´t except those machines as serious airplanes and are totally aware that they bring the vaisting of travel time, more noise, bad cabin pressure, more turbolances.. Turboprops do a good job in connecting province with the main cities. They are small and cheap to handle, need no big airport facilities. But there is no sense to connect major cities of a big region with turboprops.
And there is also this psychological effect - people from ex Yu always comment that turboprops are not real planes at all.
HAHAHA!! Best comment in a while! :D
'What to do if you have 60 passengers to PDG or SJJ. Using Airbus would be wasting of money.'
Podgorica being one of the most popular destinations out of Belgrade, I doubt they will have 60 passengers per flight. Especially now when they will have a normal frequent flyer programme and all that. Montenegro Airlines will have no competitive advantage, at least none that I am aware of.
As for Sarajevo, I know a lot of people who refused to fly from Belgrade because of horrible flight times. If this is changed then I am sure that they will see better loads, not to mention the fact that they will have a decent hub structure in Belgrade.
please see the meaning of the word "frequency" in a good dictionary.
My comment related to Sarajevo is fine. If let's say the route goes double daily it will represent a total of 14 frequencies. Out of these 14, 7 could be operated by A319 while the other 7 could be operated with an Atr.
One would expect that all people visiting this blog would be familiar with the aviation lingo.
Barcelona and Lisbon would be rather low yield destinations, focused on tourism. Hamburg and Lyon are VFR traffic only... not high yields there eather, at least for the time being.
Besides, one step at a time. We already have to make one giant one in October, lets wait and see how things go.
Best regards from Novi Sad.
Can not believe how people keep embarrassing themselves and Serbia. At least Montenegro had the ability to buy there own planes and didn't need Arabs to show them how to do it!
with their new A319.
My personal opinion is that AMS is a juwel of destination and Air Serbia should do it better on that route than Croatia Airlines!
will not change that fact.
Er ~ the sound that people often make when they pause in the middle of what they are saying or pause before they speak, often because they are deciding what to say
Er
BL1
It seems that A6-EID, A6 EIE of Etihad are both CIT owned.
Air Berlin has two planes leased out to Niki and those are to be returned to AirBerlin late October. Could those be D-ABGS & D-ABGP?
Heh, so many answers yet so little answers, for now. :)
Best regards from Novi Sad.
It should be not more than 220 Eur or something similar to that. Not to mention if its a red eye flight!