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| Belgrade is St. Petersburg's top unserved European destination |
Air Serbia has announced plans to launch flights between Belgrade and St. Petersburg from June 18. Subject to government approval, the non-stop service will operate each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday with an Airbus A319 aircraft. As a result, St. Petersburg will become Air Serbia's second destination in Russia, following Moscow. In a statement to EX-YU Aviation News, Margarita Potekhina, St. Petersburg Airport's Press Secretary, said, "The announced launch of Air Serbia flights is a long-awaited event for Pulkovo St. Petersburg Airport. In 2015, Belgrade was the top unserved destination in Europe for Pulkovo, with no direct air service between St. Petersburg and the Serbian capital. Over the past five years, indirect traffic between the two cities grew by 263%, and in 2015 amounted to over 20.000 passengers".
Commenting on the new route, Air Serbia's CEO, Dane Kondić, said, “The introduction of flights to St. Petersburg, one of the most fascinating cities in Russia, will establish an exciting new air bridge between our countries and build on our existing flights to the capital of Moscow. The new service represents a weekly capacity of 768 seats and will enable us to capture the significant demand for point-to-point travel between Belgrade and St. Petersburg, enhance the flow of trade and strengthen the long-held and friendly bilateral relations between Serbia and Russia". Currently, the Serbian carrier offers codeshare flights to St. Petersburg via the Russian capital, which are operated by Aeroflot. Furthermore, it codeshares on Aeroflot flights from Moscow to Kazan, Krasnodar, Samara and Sochi.
Air Serbia's CEO also noted, “Close to 42.000 Russian tourists visited Serbia in 2015 and total two-way trade between our states during the year was valued at nearly $2.5 billion. This service is a great opportunity to strengthen these tourism and commercial ties. Our flights have also been carefully scheduled to offer business and leisure guests from Russia seamless connectivity over our Belgrade hub to key destinations in the Balkans and Southern Europe, where we have an extensive network of flights”. Air Serbia is the second national carrier in the former Yugoslavia to announce services to Russia's second largest city, with Croatia Airlines also to launch flights to St Petersburg from Zagreb twice per week starting June 2.
St. Petersburg becomes Air Serbia's fifth new destination this summer, with the carrier to launch services to Hamburg, Ohrid, Kiev and New York as well. Furthermore, the airline has announced plans to strengthen its regional network by upgrading its Dubrovnik service to daily and operating an additional fifth weekly service to Pula. In addition, Air Serbia will substantially increase its flight to Tivat by operating two more weekly services, up to a maximum of thirty return flights a week. This development will bring an additional 1.048 seats to and from Belgrade each week. The 2016 summer season begins next Sunday. EX-YU Aviation News will bring you all the changes the national carriers in the former Yugoslavia will be making to their network's this summer over the coming week.
| Destination | Launch date |
|---|---|
| Hamburg | 15.06.2016 |
| Ohrid | 15.06.2016 |
| Kiev | 16.06.2016 |
| St. Petersburg | 18.06.2016 |
| New York | 23.06.2016 |
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Great news. I wonder if there are more new routes to be announced?
ReplyDeleteSo we should expect mostly P2P on this route since there is demand.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think that there could be a lot of transfer pax to TIV, TGD, and some other destinations.
DeleteCool. Hamburg and St.Petersburg are 2 attractive northern cities. Truly an enrichement to JU's network
ReplyDeleteThis is all good news and very ambitious plans for growth. I see it as a positive but with two points of concern though: a) BEG airport has done nothing to improve their facilities and luggage handling ability; I am afraid thatg will impact operations. b) AirSerbia announces officially the new routes way too late in my opinion i.e. a couple of months prior to inauguration may result in loss of passengers. Usually serious airlines are announcing their new routes / destinations way in advance; then advertise the same heavily. Good luck anyway for a prosperous 2016!
ReplyDeleteActually, the luggage should not be a problem as the Directorate no longer requires it to be scanned while in transfer at the airport. It was a pointless and stupid procedure which has been dropped. I mean, imagine scanning the luggage that has just arrived from TLV or LHR. lol
DeleteWeren't the Lebanese rockets discovered during a transfer scan?
DeleteThese rockets were cargo, not luggage, there were no passengers assigned to it, and for cargo there is a different procedure.
DeleteIf I remember correctly those rockets were being shipped by the Lebanese army to Oregon and they were empty.
DeleteThen again, if you do believe that certain airports have issues with security then you are more than free to scan their luggage. But why should you do it for bags that originate in AMS, BRU, TXL, STR, VIE..?
That's a customer lost for Air Serbia in the future, unless they don't make it up to them.
DeleteHow can a dog find those rockets whe they are empty and well packed?
DeleteWell, just because they were empty doesn't mean they didn't have some leftover material in them. I highly doubt they were washed/cleaned before being sent to Oregon.
DeleteSorry for the OT: Fly Dubai flying from DXB to Rostov on Don crashed while landing. Reportedly, all passengers and crew members are listed as fatalities. What a sad way to start a day :(
ReplyDeleteHorrible news.
DeleteRIP to everyone on board.
I suspect they ran out of fuel, question is why they didn't divert KRR, AER, SIP (or TBS)...
DeleteWhat's the ILS at ROV?
Delete^Correct, really makes me wonder why did it cruise around the airport for 2 hours. This means that in Dubai they filled more than enough fuel, but after 30 min of flying around the airport would it not be best to divert.
DeleteThey had fuel for another 2 hours (all together for more than 8 hours). That was no issue in this case.
Delete"Flight FZ981 from Dubai arrived in Rostov-on-Don at about 1:30am, but due to harsh weather conditions, strong side winds gusting at 25-30 meters per second, it spent the next two hours in the air, picking its moment to land.
DeleteAs FZ981 was cruising near Rostov-on-Don (ROV), several other flights opted for alternative airports, but the captain of FZ981 decided to wait for a chance to land at ROV."
"They had fuel for another 2 hours (all together for more than 8 hours). That was no issue in this case."
DeleteThey never load the B737 to routes likes that to full. A company never brings 8 hours worth of fuel for a 4:30 hour flight
From avherald - "The aircraft carried fuel for trip, contingency, alternate, final fuel reserve (30 minutes) and additional holding for about 2:30 hours, total fuel for an endurance of about 8.5 hours. The aircraft had been airborne until time of impact for 06:02 hours."
DeleteCould be a microburst but that's still strange.
DeleteJos jedan genije za avio nesrece. Kako se ne umoris?
DeleteDa li je ovo sve za 2016. ili se može očekivati još koje iznenađenje?
ReplyDeleteMislim da preostaju još Zadar i Priština, mada ce Priština početi kada se postigne politički dogovor ali je sve spremno za to.
DeleteZa Zadar nešto sumnjam da će se desiti kao sezonska ove godine, malo je vremena preostalo do leta. Priština naravno da kreće čim pre bude bilo moguće, ali mislio sam na iznenađenja poput Hamburga, to niko nije očekivao.
DeleteGledajući letnji raspored ,ima mesta u 2. talasu za još jednu liniju sa A319/A320 (po rasporedu trenutno će se koristiti 8 do 9 A319/320 ). Kao što su se gradovi na hrvatskoj obali pokazali dobro verujem da bi i dodatne linije ka nekim grčkim ostrvima bile pun pogodak (Krf, Skiathos, Heraklion..). Istina da će tamo da lete charteri tj B737 ali bi i po neki "slobodan let" bio pun sigurno.
DeleteAko i dodje do još nekih linija ili povećanja frekvencija vidim ga u južnom i jugoistočnom pravcu..
Ostaje da se vidi šta će biti sa EY A319. Ako neće da leti za BEG to je ili jedna nova linija ili će da ih izbacuju iz upotrebe i pre oktobra. Trenutno leti samo jedan dok je drugi verovatno na servisu..
There will be no Zadar or pristina, so no more summer route announcements
DeleteDane Kondic sent yesterday and email to JU empliyees elaborating on these five new routes. I dont think he would write to its employees if JU was to announce any more routes during this summer
DeleteThis is it for the summer, nice growth. PRN might happen later in the year. All eyes are now on second A330 and where it will fly next year.
DeleteA Oradea?
ReplyDeleteWell, inmho, JU's transfer schedule is much better than OU's. For SKP-BEG-LED-BEG-SKP journey, the transfer time is only 45 min, and the price was 220-240eur (it was a promotion but still). While on OU, the price was very well over 300eur, and the transfer time over 10h. I do not think that with a schedule like that OU cant be competitive, outside od summer season (they probably want to cater for russian tourists). I havent checked the connection times for other destinations (mostly WE destinations), but OU has to make a better schedule, because it cant expect this route to be profitable exclusively on O&D demand.
ReplyDeleteOU is aiming on transfers to the coast with this flight, not SKP or other non-ex-Yu destinations.
DeleteThe demand is there for Russian holidaymakers especially after the recent bombings in Turkey and the bad relationship between Russia and Turkey.
Between ZG and BG, Russians prefer to fly via Belgrade. They will use air Serbia, even to Croatian cost. Air Serbia has got the right coverage for most of the coast, save Zadar region.
DeleteThey will use whoever offers better price/transfer time ratio. Also Air Serbia flies to Split, Dubrovnik and Pula and OU flies from Zagreb to all of the coastal airports.
DeleteAnd how many of those "all" are there? Just Zadar, as Brač has just 2 frequencies per week with no possible connection. Let me also remind you that there are direct flights from St. Petersburg to Pula, Split and Tivat (Dubrovnik). The biggest CTN problem is that they don't use maximum of possible connections. For every route they should fight for every possible passengers. And with 10 hours connection time you can not say that you are competitive. But, we all know about CTN management, and I feel stupid to repeat that again and again.
DeleteThey are only resuming the setvice what JAT use to serve at one time just like most of its routes. Just a spin of words. Didn't someone yesterday say that to accomplish this they are cutting Warsaw to 4 pw?
ReplyDeleteHa ha. You bittler little man.
DeletePsi laju. Karavan prolazi.
What is to be bitter about? Many routes are old JU routes. If they introduced Helsinki, I would then call that a new route.
DeleteThe success of a route does not depend on how old it is/was, but how many pax will use it. Your reasoning defies any logic.
DeleteListen I never ment any harm with my original comment. Good for JU that they are successful in rebranding themselves and are able to grow and increase their pax on these routes. It just seems strange when people say NEW instead of reintoducing.
DeleteLast time it was flown by Jat was seasonal TIV-LED once p/w (Saturday). This was before the Montenegrin independence.
DeleteAir Serbia's transfer prices from LED to Western Europe are more than reasonable while from KBP they hower around 2,500$ to places like Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam. Any thought on that? A deal to protect PS and carry pax only where the later doesn't fly, outside of its key markets? Strange that BT was allowed all the dumping out of KBP but JU isn't.
Deleteso if theoretically JU were to open LAX and SYD you would consider these routes as not new? Reintroducing is if it was operated in 2012 and is not going back again. If a route was operated 20 years ago then its NEW. you could argue with this logic, but its a new company after all, new country, new everything....
DeleteCroatia does not have any chance on LED route now, and they should remove from it immediately, before they will loose huge amount of money. They should fly Dublin instead (lot of emigrants in last 3 years from Croatia and BiH).
ReplyDeleteUnlike West, North and Central Europe routes where deviations for connections via ZAG is much better than from BEG, here situation is opposit, deviation is much better via BEG. That makes BEG flights cheaper.
Also Croatia waves are pure improvisation, unlike Air Serbia which has 4 real waves. And to espect passenger to wait 10 hours for connection is more than stupid.
Air Serbia for sure has much more P2P passengers and much better position in relations with Russia. Image here is on Air Serbia.
And Air Serbia will have more frequencies + possibility to connect via code-share flights via SVO on days they don't fly.
So, one more time - cancel that route immediately.
Maybe their are counting on tourists. Its seasonal line.
DeleteIf I remember correctly didn't the CEO of CTN say that CTN and ASL are not in competition?
DeleteYes he was. What more he make interweaves repeating that statement as parrot. And he make huge smile on one and every air expert and enthusiast here in Croatia. That was definitely the most stupid statement in Croatian air traffic in last 20 year, and competition there is huge.
DeleteWhat is even more harmful for CTN is that ASL has already positioned itself on potential markets for CTN.
DeleteNow if CTN wants to launch markets such as SOF and OTP, they will fight an uphill battle against ASL.
Don't forget that the Russian tourists deinetely will prefer Croatia for their vacation. Serbia have nothing to offer to them ...sorry!
DeleteCroatia is too expensive for Russians, that is the issue
DeleteOU seasonal flight ZAG LED will have success... thats only 2 pw. In season enough pax ofr OU and ASL both
ReplyDeleteI agree ... they both have different products and networks, which will appeal to different market segments. More than enough passengers for both to be successful
DeleteFor this year I agree, too.
DeleteSummer 2017 could be something different, let's see.
Za sve koji ne znaju AirSerbia planira da uvede i let do Južne Amerike! Verovatno Rio. To je njihov dugorocni cilj kada nabave treći A330, sa drugim Peking i Toronto.
ReplyDeletePo meni ta linija do JA će biti veliki promašaj ili totalni hit. Nema sredine.
Što se tice informacije ona je od jednog pilota :)
Can the A332 cover the distance?
DeleteRio would have made sense if it started before the Olympics. But, as you said, either a disaster or a total hit.
DeleteZa pocetak cetiri nove evropske destinacije i prve Americke pod imenom Er Srbija iskreno reci jeste prijatna vest. Koje svako dobro namerno uho zelibda cuje. ocigledno da Tim Er Srbije pazljivo ''kroji'' svoju mrezu i vreme svojih resursa. Dane & Team. Keep up flag✈!. Rodney✈ is all ways with you people.
DeleteRodney & people belong to civil Aviation. Kraljevo✈Sydney✈
Kakav Rio, šta lupate? Kodšer sa Alitalijom bi bio okej i bilo bi smisla sa AZ i do GRU i EZE, ali let do Ria sigurno nije u planu. Nekog ovde trese Zika virus...
DeleteThe only way would be one-off deal to pick up Serbia Olypic team at the end of Rio Olympics and fly them direct to Belgrade. Air Serbia could reposition to Rio from JFK on Saturday Aug 20 with codeshare partners taking BEG bound passengers on that day, as JU wound have to cancel JFK-BEG leg. Later that night in Rio JU A330 could pick up Serbia team (including waterpolo team, final game is on Aug 20!) and arrive in Belgrade sometime on Sunday Aug 21 for a no doubt televised spectacle. Sounds plausible?
DeleteTreba AS da uvede letove i do Barselone i Helsinkija. Zanimljivo je da su Finci nacija koja najviše putuje, oko 8 putovanja godišnje.
ReplyDeleteOd tih osam tura, šest su u Rusiju na alkoholisanje. A i malo ih je.
DeleteBravo za ASL!! Jedva cekam da cujem koje su sledece nove destinacije koje ce uvesti. Barselona, Helsinki, Oslo, Madrid, Lisabon, Mostar i Pristina za pocetak.
ReplyDeleteYou have obviously not read the comments from above if you are referring to summer season. There are no more new routes this summer, but the routes you mentioned other than mostar are all logical.
DeleteOvo su odlicne vesti za Srpsko vazduhoplovstvo a pogotovu za Aerodrom BEG koji ce sigurno preci 5 Mil putnika.
ReplyDeleteINN-NS
Лепе вести!
ReplyDelete