The Chairman of the Air Serbia Supervisory Board and the Mayor of Belgrade, Siniša Mali, has said the airline is considering launching flights to Kazakhstan following talks with the regional governor of the central Asian republic's largest province of Almaty. According to Mr Mali, the service would strengthen relations between the two countries and improve business links. The talks come ahead of an official three-day state visit by the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to Serbia which begins today. According to Mr Mali, further discussions on the potential new route will be held during the visit. Air Serbia has made no comments on the matter. Simmilarly, in February, Mr Mali announced that the Serbian carrier was eyeing services to Kiev and St Petersburg. The new routes were confirmed and launched several months later.
Almaty Airport is Kazakhstan's busiest, handling some five million passengers per year. The country's national carrier, Air Astana, maintains a base in the city offering flights to Europe and Asia. Several European airlines also serve Almaty, including Lufthansa, KLM, Aeroflot and Belavia, as well as Czech Airlines and Ellin Air on a seasonal basis. Serbian citizens do not need a visa to enter Kazakhstan. Furthermore, Serbia is one of only a handful of European countries that do not require Kazakhstani passport holders entry visas. Others include Macedonia, Albania, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Russia. Air Serbia's part-owner, Etihad Airways, will suspend flights to Almaty, along with Larnaca, at the start of the 2016/17 winter season this October. The carrier maintained three weekly flights to Kazakhstan's largest city with an Airbus A319 aircraft.
Currently, none of the national carriers from the former Yugoslavia operate flights to central Asia. Apart from potential transfer passengers, services between Belgrade and Kazakhstan could cater for Serbian workers and engineers who are involved in the development of several major infrastructure projects in the country, although whether this could be enough to turn the potential service into reality remains to be seen. Kazakhstan will host the major bi-annual international exposition Expo in 2017 with around two to three million people expected to visit the international pavilions from June to September next year.
Comments
Usually when Mali announced a route was being considered it actually launched. Although consideration does not mean it will go ahead.
I am not saying that ASL will fly to Kazakhstan (I will believe it once tickets go on sale or the flights are officially scheduled), but you can't compare the announcements of Mihajlovic and Mali when the topic is ASL.
The other question is the profitability of that line. We should not forget that A319 would need almost all day to fly there and back and I am not sure that JU has spare planes for this kind of experiment.
From the other side if there would be stop over in IKA it would make the story much different and open the door to profitability.
I just hope that JU is not forced to open that line due to the fact that EY is closing it.
Don't forget that airliners seem to all be hugging the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. This adds another 100-150 km or so.
It wouldn't be the longest a319/a320 flight, but it would still test the plane pretty well.
Currently on this route I'm flying mostly Turkish and Aeroflot, sometimes Lufthansa.
Second, the network of LH, BA, AF is much bigger than JU network for connecting flights from Kazakhstan
Third, if LH send one plane to ALA or TSE and keep it flying all day only on that route it is not big deal for them as they have 271 planes in fleet. If JU sends one plane for whole day flying to Kazakhstan it is 5% of all their fleet.
+1
INN-NS
Ali takodje OS pojacava letove za Iran.
INN-NS
2) @nebojsa popovic
going by this logic Serbia should not have an airline. Serbias economy suffers from low paying black market jobs where the government loses on taxes and low purchase power of its people. Serbian workers in Kazakhstan get much better salaries. Energoprojekt is a good example of Serbian labour in Kazakhstan. Direct flights could stimulate a growth in business and trade, which is what we need. JU has a surplus of aircraft in the winter and what better way to use it than on a long flight. Also, rumour here has been another 2 A319's will be joining the fleet from AB and they need to go somewhere.
3) I see this flight fitting perfect in the 13h departure wave. Western Europe and JFK connects to this flight, a couple extra hours on ground in Kazakhstan and back to BEG for an arrival before 6am to connect again to Western Europe and JFK. A codeshare with Air Astana would be icing on the cake as both side have something to offer.
That kind of logic cannot be followed in this case at all. Air Serbia is young company from country that suffered a lot in recent 25 years. It was a great move to establish the company as it is, but in next moves management needs to be on the first place realistic when it comes to exotic destinations. Kazakhstan is far from Europe with population that is also not among the richest nations, there is almost no Serbian diaspora there (there are more Serbian people in Spain but JU does not plan to fly there) except people who work for construction companies but their number is far from enough to open direct line which would occupy plane for whole day. IKA would be much smarter decision. The rumours about 2 A319 are quite old and they should not be trusted as long as we do not see these planes in BEG.
Then why should Aeroflot, KLM or Lufthansa open flights if Turkish (or any other airline) is flying there?!
What sort of logic is that?
Speculating the need for a service that in the end is just a feeder to the rest of Europe is pointless since this won't grow your tourism internally - I see the majority of the passengers here as being VFR and not tourist or even stopover potential for the growth of Serbian tourism.
The first option is to serve the morning bank of W. Europe departures, which also connects rather well to JFK and Zagreb and Ljubljana as well. All times are local BEG. I think ALA is 4 hours ahead.
Arrival BEG 06:00
Departure BEG 13:00 (Layover BEG 7hr 00min)
Arrival ALA 20:00 (Block Time 7hr 00min)
Departure ALA 22:30 (Layover ALA 2hr 30 min)
Arrival BEG 06:00 (Block Time 7hr 30 min)
The second option is to target the afternoon W. Europe departures.
Arrival BEG 14:30
Departure BEG 23:45 (Layover BEG 8hr 15 min)
Arrival ALA 06:45 (Block Time 7hr 00min)
Departure ALA 08:45 (12:45) Layover ALA (1hr 15min)
Arrival BEG 14:30 (Block Time 7hr 30min)
I think we can all agree that such a route with so little P2P traffic would almost certainly not be profitable, but if the losses are small or the route can break even, this route could certainly help the company by establishing it as a transit hub and bringing in a lot of traffic flow. Also, the economic and political benefits for Serbia would be rather large.
I think the greatest chance of success would be to lease an A320 with winglets and equip it in ASL's 155 seat config. Then, basically dedicate that plane to flying daily to ALA serving the morning W. Europe departues (the first schedule I wrote in this post). The next step would be to start a marketing campaign in Almaty to introduce BEG as an extremely convenient stopover point to West Europe.
I don't think that there are more than 10-15 passengers per day between ALA and BEG, so ASL has no other choice but to go hard for transit pax. Without at least 6-7 weekly flights, there is little chance that this route will succeed.
The two main competitors would probably be Turkish (up to 9 weekly flights), Aeroflot (up to 16 weekly flights) and Ukraine International Airlines (Daily flights).
If ASL can offer convinient and daily connections to about 10 major European cities, a handful of Ex-Yu destinations, and even offer flights to JFK, maybe they can pull enough transit traffic to make it worth it.
This information is easily accessible by running through pax itineries, that is check in pax and their checked in final destination.
EY simply doesn't have capacity to expand much in AUH, as they struggle with current operations as it is.
VY seems to be doing ok with their seasonal BCN. JU has a codeshare agreement with UX which could boost JU offerings ex MAD and BCN. Not to mention the large amount of traffic between Bulgaria and Romania to Spain, which could push SOF and OTP to double daily.
Thank you.