Air Serbia is readying for the arrival of its first wide-body Airbus A330-200 aircraft, with the jet to undergo final preparations early next month before joining the fleet in June. The airline's Chairman, Siniša Mali, told the "TangoSix" portal, "It will take some two to three weeks to fit-out the interiors and we hope that all work will be completed by the first week of June". Mr Mali noted that from then on, until the aircraft's maiden flight to New York on June 23, the jet will be used for cabin crew training purposes, also known as crew familiarisation. "We will have training flights to the United States and several other cities. We plan to fly the A330 to Niš Constantine the Great Airport too, so the public from that part of Serbia can see our new aircraft".
According to Air Serbia's Chairman, the first few weeks in June will also be used to promote both the new service to New York and the aircraft itself. Furthermore, Belgrade Airport will also have the opportunity to get accustomed to handling the wide-body jet in the weeks leading up to the inaugural flight. The A330 in question will be on lease from India's Jet Airways and is currently based in Abu Dhabi, operating on Etihad Airways' behalf. The 254-seat aircraft will feature eighteen seats in business class and the remaining 236 in economy. Air Serbia's CEO, Dane Kondić, recently said, "The biggest single expense of flying long haul is the cost of fuel and given where fuel is today, if you were ever going to launch long haul flying now is the time to do it. First mover advantage will give us enormous benefit and we are all very excited and the planning continues to a successful launch on June 23".
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| Air Serbia A330 cabin layout (click to enlarge) |
Mr Mali noted that Air Serbia no longer enjoys subsidies and has been paying its hub airport for all provided services since the start of the year, in line with the government's transaction agreement with Etihad Airways over its part-ownership of the Serbian carrier. However, according to the Chairman, the airline will continue being more aggressive on the market than its competitors. "Our strategy is to start flying double daily to a number of cities, to get new regional planes, either turboprops or jet-engine aircraft, in order to cover points in the region. That is our strategy. We are more aggressive than the rest, we invested in excellent service, we have relatively competitive fares, we have installed Wi-Fi on board our aircraft and we will start flying to New York", Mr Mali concluded.
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Comments
This is really waste of money!
Instead they should better flown 1 ATR 72 to Nis, and commence flight out of there to VIE, MUC and MXP for example, so the public from that part of Serbia can see this country has national carrier.
http://www.modli.rs/flying/vrsac/VrsacDC10.jpg
YU-ARA will be the flagship of the fleet. There is no harm in showing it off in INI. The cost is almost immaterial given the fact that there will be a lot of training flights before the JFK route kicks off - including test flights to JFK.
3/2015 24142
3/2016 41664
Bravo DBV!!!
YU-ARA ce biti pravi ukras na aerodromu BEG.
I da u Maju bude Aerodrom spreman za njegov Dolazak.
INN-NS
What Niš needs is a fast and reliable rail link to Belgrade and further. This trip should last an hour, or hour and a half, and it could have a direct link to the airport.
But even as it is, Niš is just to well connected to JU hub in order to be considered as a secondary hub. As regards VIE flight, there are two daily ATRs from BEG - I am very doubtful INI would have the capacity to fill one.
But, yeah, Belgrade Airlines.
http://www.danas.rs/danasrs/ekonomija/agencije_otkazuju_letove_air_serbia_naplacuje_penale_.4.html?news_id=318301
Just to alert you on the "quality" of stuff you decided to OT with.
March 2015: 315.283
March 2016: 313.174
Ops are down 4% in March, and cargo is down 8%.
INN-NS
So how do you figure that "their overall performance will continue to go down" ??
Every four years there is 29th of February
all the best for airserbia
As you correctly point out, both are different.
You don't need number of operations to increase to improve overall performance. You can get better overall performance by reducing number of operations ie. capacity.
Even you should know that....
I apsolutno je glupo uvoditi letove iz INI i praviti gubitke , Gospodin je gore upravu treba brza pruga.
INN-NS
@INN , Dubai je bio 1 stop.
INN-NS
INN-NS
Now, the question is cabin utilization. I would really love to see C class numbers once flights start, as they are expensive. Etihad charges below 2K EUR for most C destinations from BEG (incl. Far East) - and JU's lowest rate is closer to 3K.
Two weeklies from secondary hub is just crazy for a legacy carrier with a hub system. So, they should have two separate business models, right? Also, there's going to be a lot of pax who don't want to travel on, for example, Mondays and Thursdays, resulting in INI pax travelling to BEG and flying from there, further reducing potential LF.
To cut long story short, I'm sure no one in Air Serbia hates INI for any reason and would gladly fly from there, if only these flights were financially viabile. They are in business of earning money, so I'm sure they'd be up for it.
In absence of JU grasping this great opportunity you believe INI is, why don't Wizz, easy or Ryan step in? Well, I guess they know the same thing JU does, that otherwise eludes a lot of people. I wish it were different, honestly, but it comes down to a sad fact that INI is a 100k town with huge unemployment rates and miserable disposable income. Not that BEG is much better, but at least there's significantly more people.
They will be the only ones flying non-stop between BEG and JFK, so they should be able to command a premium over the 1 stop players. Beyond JFK, they will need to be price competitive with the other 1 stop players selling from Serbia
All flights from Osijek (international and domestic) are subsidized. When they weren't there were no flights.
315.283 313.174 -1%
4.479 4.312 -4%
1.109.013 1.020.855 -8%
142.353 181.402 +27%
No it doesn't. Wizz flights are targeting diaspora looking to get home, not local market looking for a citybreak in EU.
JU 500 go and fly and show the world how beautiful u are..... :-))
Must be the "First time in history" virus.
https://english.sta.si/2249253/adria-airways-scraps-flights-to-stockholm-and-cologne
INN-NS
Regionalni Avioni :
8 ATR 72-600
4-6 E190
8 A319
2 A320
10 A320 neo
4 A332
2 A333 ali samo mozda ako Aerodrom dovoljno ekspandira posto poste linije gde bi bio isplativ.
INN-NS
You said there is not a lot of diplomats, tourist, NGO, business passengers from INI? And how many of those are in OSI?
"Mr Mali noted that Air Serbia no longer enjoys subsidies and has been paying its hub airport for all provided services since the start of the year"
The problem is not one ac, but in the short term future problems could arise from lack of upgrades to facilities and capacity issues should there be further increases being from JU or a foreign carrier. Problem also with no concrete development plan being enforced to plan out and enforce upgrades and expansion, while works underwent has been slow.
Sent Luis je bio aerodrom sa 30 mil putnika do 2000-te sa gomilom 747 i interkontinentalnim linijama. Sada ima samo 12 mil i ni jednu interkontinentalnu liniju, i njima je velika stvar kad dodje A330.
So no need to fantasize about some dream fleet when the airline can barely get an Atr.
This "NO LONGER" is only 3 month!!! Let 1 year pass since the "NO LONGER" and we will see how they will perform when they have to pay...
Belgrade has long-haul flights, Zagreb does not.
Belgrade is practically only airport in Serbia, Croatia has 9 airports.
Anyway, I am looking forward to see FR to INI in the near feature much more then ASL! Good luck to all of them!
Does really Belgrade have a long-haul flights or it will have? I think this important clarification. And yes, Zagreb have seasonal long-haul to Seoul and will have to Toronto. Zagreb have British Airways, Air France, Brussels Airlines, KLM, Iberia, El-Al - Belgrad don't have a major European carrier beside Alitalia, Lufthansa, Aeroflot and Turkish.
Yes, Croatia have 9 airports, but most of them are with seasonal flights. Regarding having a national carrier - we can say that Croatia really have NATIONAL CARRIER, because they fly from all over Croatia and not fron 1 airport only.