Air Serbia will suspend services between Belgrade and Warsaw at the start of the 2016/17 winter season, which begins on October 30. Ticket sales for flights past this date have been discontinued, however, the carrier will offer alternatives through its codeshare partners LOT Polish Airlines and Air Berlin. Air Serbia's flights to Warsaw, launched in May 2014, have struggled for some time and it is believed the route was only maintained over the past year since its competitor LOT temporarily suspended services to Belgrade from July 2015 to January 2016 due to European Union imposed restructuring. Air Serbia will operate its last scheduled flight to the Polish capital on October 28.
LOT, which maintains its services to Belgrade with smaller-capacity Embraer jets, is performing well on the route. This summer, the carrier boosted its four weekly flights to daily. Krystian Rolla, LOT's Sales Manager for Europe & Middle East, said the passenger structure on the route is mixed, with both transfer and point to point travellers using the service. "There is no dominant category of passengers. It varies based on the day of the week", Mr Rolla said. "Of those transferring through Warsaw, the majority of passengers connect onto flights to Toronto and several points in western Europe", he added. LOT competes against Air Serbia on the route, although the two carriers codeshare on each others' flights. "There is enough room for both carriers on this route. We view this as an opportunity to strengthen cooperation to the mutual benefit of both sides, rather than competition", Mr Rolla noted.
Air Serbia is operating four weekly flights to the Polish capital this summer, which is down from daily last year. LOT will continue codesharing on the Serbian carrier's flights from Belgrade to Abu Dhabi, Podgorica and Tivat, despite Air Serbia's plans to suspend its flights to Warsaw. The carrier has already made several changes to its upcoming winter schedule. As previously reported, it will extend its seasonal flights from Belgrade to Larnaca into winter, making it a year-round destination. In addition, the airline will also maintain its recently launched service to Hamburg during the winter months. Initially, the route was scheduled to operate on a seasonal basis. Flights to New York will run throughout the year as planned. Further changes to winter operations are possible.
This was expected. Better use the aircraft somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is the plane will be deployed to Hamburg instead.
ReplyDeleteI hope they keep LED and KBP over the winter but they urgently need more planes.
ReplyDeleteNeither will be kept during the winter season and flights have been removed from the booking systems.
DeleteYes. Seems like a shame because they are performing quite well.
DeleteWhich one of the new routes is doing the best for them? St. Peterburg, Kiev or Hamburg?
ReplyDeleteI guess it would be Hamburg since they are keeping it but I don't have any numbers.
DeleteI expected LED to be the best performing route. For me it makes sense to keep LED in the winter since you would have a balance between eastern and western routes.
DeleteI agree but remember Air Berlin flies from Hamburg. I would not be surprised if they are keeping it because of them. Air Berlin has benefited quite a bit from Air Serbia over the last year.
DeleteQuestion, will New York stay as 5 p/w during winter?
DeleteAmong three mentioned routes, so far LED is performing the best by far. But during winter that could change.
DeleteMaybe the final destination of a huge portion of LED or KBP passengers is the Adriatic coast. In that case keeping them during winter does not make sense.
DeleteJU will keep the same timetable for BEG-JFK during W16.
Delete@anon 1:55
DeleteI don't know about KBP, but I'm sure that your statement it's not true for LED. The CEO od LED said that BEG was the busiest unserved route from LED, with somewhere around 20k pax whose final destination was BEG.
It was not a statement, just a guess. Thanks for the info.
DeleteIf only they had regional jets...
ReplyDeleteLOT is smarter than ASL.
Regional jets do not ensure profits, what's more, ops costs are higher so unless you have killer yields, I'm afraid in today's day and competitive age, it is very, very tough. Low fuel prices do help though....
DeleteYes but if you have 70 passengers flying to CPH, it will be easier to make money with an E75 than an A319.
DeleteIt's simple. Little point to point traffic. Most people transfer and they transfer to the Baltics through Warsaw using LOT. Very few people from Poland go to Belgrade to transfer to places like Podgorica and Tivat.
ReplyDeleteJAT tried Warsaw on numerous occasions. It didn't work during old Yugoslav times either when the airline was pretty much set up in a simmilar manner so as to serve transfer passengers from across the world (and back then their network was much bigger and flights from Poland much more limited).
ReplyDeleteYes but Poland has changed since then and today it's an economic powerhouse.
DeleteTrue that. Poland is the best performing economy in Eastern Europe in the last 30 years. They are the only country from the former Soviet block that is closing the wealth gap with Western Europe. Poland is the future.
DeleteLOT is doing well They were less expensive so I flew with them in March. Plane was full. Except for me I don't think a single person was flying to Warsaw. Everyone was in transit.
ReplyDeleteMost flights were operated by the E75 this summer which shows that bookings were good.
DeleteI don't understand what they are waiting for? Why can't they just get new regional planes?! Just lease them
Deleteleasing costs.
DeleteJU could order them but it needs to go as a bulk order throught the EY group to be cheaper to attain and to train the crew.
An order of 15 ERJ/CRJ/SSJ would go well considering JU will attain soon the A320neo's. A problem will be gate space in BEG as there isnt enough gates to serve that amount of aircraft when adding as well the foreign carriers serving BEG.
Wizz Air is such a joke. They operate out of tertiary airports yet they can't keep a schedule. Their BEG flights have been horribly late for like two weeks now. What a joke.
ReplyDeleteFunny how nobody but you seems to be making noises about this ... i thought it was only Air Serbia who were late and have issues ....
DeleteThe negative comments about JU follow a specific agenda, are most of the time regurgitated and come from a handful of individuals, whose holy duty is to check every day and shed negative light on positive JU news. I wouldn't pay too much attention to these fanboys of JU's demise, and their sci-fi stories.
DeleteYeah, just like your comments follow a specific agenda. You are no different.
DeleteI think this is the only winter suspension we will see this year.
ReplyDeleteAnyone know what other changes might take place for W16-17?
ReplyDeleteThis route would have been cut last winter had LOT not decided to suspend it for a limited time.
ReplyDeleteSo currently we have 3 new routes which were not operated last winter - JFK, LCA and HAM. And one loss - WAW.
ReplyDeleteDont forget KBP.
DeleteI'm just comparing W2015/16 with W16/17.
DeleteThis is definetely bad news for ASL, if they can not compete against LOT how would they be able to compete against OS, TK, LH and Swiss?
ReplyDeleteJust my 2c.
I think these are good news. They are dropping a destination where there is no profit and they ensured a code-share with LOT to keep it available for some ASL passengers. Poland is definitively not a core market for ASL. You are reading too much into it.
Deleteovo je druga izgubljena bitka nakon teskog poraya u LCA od WIZZ-a, ali nemojmo zaboraviti i pobede
DeleteLot has competitive prices BEG-WAW-JFK compared to JU BEG-JFK. Air Serbia did not try to be competitive in Poland with WAW-BEG-JFK. LO also has ORD and YYZ to offer to BEG market in North America. LO was very weak when they started BEG and were ready to close BEG in winter 2013/2014 but decided to stay and now they won based on transfer passengers. Air Serbia was not aggressive enough expanding ( North America and Baltics) and OS, TK, LH etc will now use same tactics.
DeletePoland is a country of 40 million people and has a agrowing economy.
DeleteIt should have worked for JU.
Poljska ima skoro 40 miliona stanovnika a Varsava je vazan privredni centar. Hoces da mi kazes da nije bilo trzista za JU?
DeleteDruze, ti ratovi su davno prosli, nema potrebe niti osnova za tako dramaticnu retoriku. Ne biju se ovde nikakve bitke. Zivimo u miru, snizi strasti, to su samo kompanije koje pokusavaju da zarade sto vise novca.
DeleteCannot book a flight on ASL website for Kiev in november 4 days. Are they dropping this route too? Need it for Nov 15 to the 18th. Comes up invalid route
DeleteIt is a seasonal route as mentioned a thousand times. It runs until September.
DeletePoland is a big country with the growing economy but apparently not so many tourist/economic links with the Balkans, the ASL's strongest card. That will hopefully change, but for the moment it is better not to lose money on it. LOT did the same recently on the very same route.
DeleteUkraine also has 40 million people but Air Serbia failed despite having a monopoly on the route.
DeleteHow did Air Serbia fail in Ukraine? The flights are doing very well. Stop trolling.
DeleteI did a weekend tour of Kiev, so flew on Friday and came back on Sunday with the evening flight. BEG-KBP (morning flight) 70% LF.. KBP-BEG (night flight) around 60%. 2/3 of the plane were transiting.. But there was also a good p2p share..
DeleteDifference is in the aircraft.
DeleteA full LO ERJ170 is not a good load on JU's A319. JU simply doesnt have an aircraft it can compete with, unless they send the ATR, which again will put them at a disadvantage compared to LO.
Comparing the airlines like you did doesnt work as there is a much larger O&D demand from Germany and Switzerland compared to Poland. JU does great in ZRH for example, where they send 2 daily A320 with fantastic loads.
LO also has flights with smaller ac to more destinations ex WAW than what JU has with a larger aircraft to less destinations. At this time its better to just send the ac else where.
Yes but it makes no sense for them to fail at such as destination. I am sure there is a market big enough to fill an A319 to ATH, IST, SKG, DBV, SPU...
DeleteJU isnt TK with alot of frequencies all over Europe to attract high numbers of transit traffic. It still heavily relies on O&D as the numbers indicate, regardless of the fact that transit numbers have grown significantly. If JU had a smaller aircraft as LO does than yes there is room for the both. Currently the A319 isnt the right plane for JU to send to WAW. JU doesnt have much to offer via BEG nor the frequencies to make whats there convenient for travel.
DeleteWAW simply doesnt have huge O&D numbers to justify 2 carriers and almost 2000 seats per week both ways.
It is very worrying that BEG did not publish its numbers for June. Today is 18 July for god's sake! It doesn't feel like some kind of business tactics any more, but like pure and simple incompetence. They hired hundreds of new employees in last few years, but obviously not the persons who get the job done.
ReplyDeleteThey did. Check their website. Stop trolling.
DeleteI have checked their website before posting my comment. They published their numbers few minutes later. So, you owe me an apology. Stop being rude.
DeleteWhy should I apologise. Did your life change because their numbers were reported on July 18? Many airports across the EU don't even publish their numbers. BEG has always posted its figures and publishes extremely detailed 100 page quarterly results the likes Zagreb, Ljubljana, Skopje have never published. You were being a drama queen for no reason.
DeleteYou should apologize because you falsely accused me of trolling. Few years ago BEG was very good with statistics, better than its competitors. The numbers would be often published on the very first day of the next month. Now almost three additional weeks are necessary to do the same. Something changed and the ASL CEO might be right when he claimed recently that BEG is the bottleneck in ASL development.
DeleteThe only time BEG did not publish its monthly figure and was regularly late in publishing it was in 2009. Interesting how Ljubljana hasn't bothered publishing its results on its website since January 2015.
DeleteHow are their cargo numbers?
DeleteCargo grew 48%
Deletein regards to BEG's numbers for June: a possible tactic is to release them after July's numbers show at least some growth... Highly controlled PR...
ReplyDeleteoops, here they are:
ReplyDeleteBEG, June
2015: 461.490
2016: 460.020
this is ok actually, 99,7%... not even a full 1% down. Pretty decent. July should be 3% up, and so will the rest of the summer season. BEG might just do around 4,90 to 4,95 perhaps even 5 mil pax... it all depends on how the winter timetable will be set
DeleteThanks. Does anyone has an idea why does BEG have 80 flights less than the last year. I would expect significant growth there, with the launch of JFK, KBP, HAM, LED, OHD... Strange.
DeleteFewer charters. No one is going to Turkey, Tunisia or Egypt.
DeleteNope, just forget 5 million pax. If JFK, LED, HAM, OHD, KBP did not help this june then it's too late to take advantage in july, august and half of september. That's about the summer period for BEG.
DeleteThat would mean that the ASL recent expansion ironed out the decrease of flights by Turkish, Tunisian and Egyptian charter companies in BEG. In that case ASL just increased its market share in BEG, right?
DeleteAnon 2.15. You should bear in mind that ASL expansion covers only the second half of June, and JFK only the last seven days. I think you may be right, but you also may be just over-confidently jumping to conclusions based on two-weeks/one-week performance.
DeleteThe reduced number of charter flights will have an effect on summer performance as more people will be driving to Greece/Montenegro/Croatia instead of flying to Turkey/Egypt/Tunisia.
DeleteI believe BEG will record some growth, it usually takes 1 month for the new destinations to pick up... it was the same with OU and their flights out of ZAG in May...it wasn't until June when this growth became apparent. BEG will grow possibly around 20-30K each month during the summer, thus bringing the total to rougly 4,9 mil pax...
DeleteAnon 2.30. More probably, the people that flew to 5* hotels to Egypt or Turkey would need to satisfy themselves with 3* in Greece or Spain or to pay more if they can afford. The ASL loads to the Adriatic and charter flights to Spain and Italy may increase.
DeleteCargo is +48% but nobody is paying attention.
Delete^ I guess the ceasefire in Syria is over ;)
DeleteIST is certainly not breaking records.
DeleteHi all, sorry about the OT but I was going thought airliners.net for the first time since they changed their layout and noticed that someone who I believe is an air traffic controller at Zagreb and always seems to be well informed with what is happening in Croatian Aviation and I should add his views seem very balanced, mentioned Emirates staring Zagreb next year.... I'm sure if the start Zagreb than Belgrade will also be in the cards.
ReplyDeleteCould be an interesting year ahead!!
EK has a shortage of Boeing pilots, and the A330/340 fleet is likely to be out by the end of the year, which are being phased out fast. EK has recently cut back a number of frequencies served on the B777.
DeleteI have heard the rumour of ZAG but also of OTP and BEG. EK is not present in our region and lost its connecting pax from BEG when JU stopped flying to DXB and EY and QR started their flights. QR does great in ZAG and will be much easier to enter for EK.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete