Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport has identified Budapest, Sofia and Thessaloniki airports as its primary competitors in the region in the coming years and no longer sees the likes of Zagreb and Sarajevo as its main rivals, according to General Manager, Saša Vlaisavljević. The airport is investing heavily in its infrastructure to make it more competitive against its counterparts and unlike others in the former Yugoslavia handles a significant number of transfer passengers. "As an example, in 2015 Belgrade Airport had a greater profit margin than several others in the region combined (Sofia, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Tirana and Zagreb). All of our projects are financed from our own funds without a single loan being taken out. This year we completed work on a de-icing platform which is not a common feature at European airports, giving our customers significant benefits. We are equipped to better handle emergency situations because we have what others don't in this area. It's already happening and we are being selected over other airports in the region because we offer the latest equipment and technology", Mr Vlaisaljvević notes.
Last year, Belgrade Airport saw its number of transfer passengers increase by half a million and this upward trend has continued into 2016. "Air Serbia has made a significant impact on our business. We have an excellent relationship with the airline, which has no debts owed towards us. This wasn't the case with Jat. One of the most important events was the resumption of transatlantic flights to the United States. This gave the airport an excellent opportunity to position itself in this part of Europe as the most important transfer point", the General Manager says. He adds that the airport is estimated to record at least 26 million euros in profit this year, its best on record, and a significant improvement from just 115.000 euros in 2013.
Nearby airports in the region have also been growing at a rapid pace. Thanks in-part to the battle between low cost rivals Wizz Air and Ryanair, Sofia Airport has seen 20% passenger growth so far this year and is now neck-and-neck with its traditionally busier counterpart in Belgrade. However, closer to home, the development of Niš Airport as Serbia's main low cost hub has also attracted a number of passengers from the country who had previously used Belgrade as their point of departure. "Our relationship with Niš Airport is based on cooperation. We have donated equipment and provided financial assistance to Constantine the Great Airport on numerous occasions. Developing secondary airports throughout Serbia is extremely important for our country and its citizens, as it boosts the number of tourists, business travellers and the local economy. A total of five low cost airlines currently operate services to Belgrade (Wizz Air, easyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Flydubai and Pegasus Airlines, as well as Germanwings and Vueling on a seasonal summer basis. The best example that low cost airlines recognise Belgrade Airport's potential is that Wizz Air will launch a number of new routes next May, while Transavia will introduce flights from Amsterdam", Mr Vlaisavljević concludes.
Comments
My personal opinion is that BEG's main competitors are OTP, VIE and ATH. Even though BEG is the smallest of them all they are, just like BEG, seeing a mix of O&D and transfer passengers. If JU keeps on growing and actually expands their network then we might see BEG handle six million passengers in the next three years.
As for the upgrades, once complete, I think BEG will look quite nice and modern.
I still hope nothing will become of the concession, after all it's no guarantee for a success.
secondly, let's wait and see financial statement of airserbia and see if there is a symbiotic relatioship between the the two, or is it a parasitic one where parasite cannot make money once it had to start paying for the airport services.
by knowing they had a couple of millions profit in previous years with tens of millions of unpaid airport taxes, which airport later had to write off, most likely it will be a loss.
i am really worried that this post-truth thing is getting a for grip on this discussion forum.
this type of posts are either made because you are not reading/comprehending correctly or just to create a murmur and avoid any proper discussion.
until 2016 - airserbia did't pay taxes, airport needed to write them off
https://www.krik.rs/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Zakljucak-vlade_Air-Serbia_aerodrom-30.12.2015.pdf
post 2016 - airserbia does pay taxes, but there is not clue what is the impact on it's bottomline results
Your logic dictates that Etihad will pull out of their single successful European venture because the others are struggling?
I'm sure Wizz payed all the taxes from day 1 on time.
Can somebody confirm this who has seen aircrafts been de-iced at the platform?
Btw I'm flying today with LX ZRH-BEG, maybe I can answer my question myself :-)
http://www.exyuaviation.com/2016/12/belgrade-to-open-de-icing-platform-in.html
what a pretentious thing to be said by this apparatchik!
zagreb will finish its upgrade and is a member of eu and is no longer a rival? lol
there is no real source of growth for belgrade airport in the future. the numbers plateaued with only some modest growth possible.
this growth of 1+mil passangers was only thanks to airserbia whose numbers peaked, as we all saw, with only low single digits increases in the future possible. transatlantic flights are already here. i don't believe there is much potential to have a profitable connections with china and central asia, so if those flights do happen it will last a season or two. not much more lcc potential...
So our dear Saša is being delusionall again. Same as when he wanted to pour 30mil€ in Sava Centar
To moze da radi Zadar koji ima putnike dva i po meseca. Beograd zivi 12 meseci.
By turning Air Serbia around they could always use it as their poster child for any future 'adventures.'
The last thing EY wants is for governments to demand guarantees before they hand them over their failing carriers. Then again, given the dire situation at EY, I highly doubt they are looking to 'save' any more airlines from imminent bankruptcy.
Each pax brings much more to the economy of Serbia than a couple euros in airport taxes. Even it is better than 5 mil pax and 26 mil profit.
On the other hand, Sofia is in EU for 10 years already, economy is bigger than Serbian for 15 years. Diaspora is bigger for long time. I cannot turn my head around the fact that Sofia trails Belgrade for so long.
Any explanation?
LCC are good for traffic numbers, but not great for profit and future development. It is strange to have the capital airport in the country dominated by LCCs. Only other country in that position is Hungary, and against its own choice.
As far as NYC, BEY or TLV go, JU's presence in all of these markets is too weak for them to win over some of the passengers. Also, what market is there from Lebanon to places like Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan?
For the time being, Central Asia is TK's and SU's playground. Until JU can offer a strong and competitive European network it doesn't need such risky and costly adventures. Central Asia is best served through code-share agreements via SVO.
Before thinking of the Orient, JU might want to start with serving ATH two times per day throughout the year.
how the hell do you plan to take on budapest with that? and how exactly do you overlap with thessaloniki and sofia?
Ako budu sirili lokalnu mrezu letovi u centralnu aziju mogu da budu veliki pogodak za AS. Austrian tamo leti. I ne treba vise malo kavkaza i uzbekistan i kazahstan. To je tri aviona otprilike. jedan ili dva mogu da budu i codesherovi tamosnjih kompanija.
U ATH nema sta da traze osim da podese dobro let prema NYC.
These are their numbers in 2015:
SKG: 5.341.293
BEG: 4.776.110
SOF: 4.088.943
SOF might be recording crazy numbers but I don't think it will overtake BEG. Both airports will have about the same number of passengers.
However, let's not forget something here. Sofia's booming numbers are not a result of organic growth. They are there because the market is artificially stimulated as a result of an ongoing feud between FR and W6. What will happen after the war is over? What if Bulgaria Air doesn't make it?
Just like ZAG, without connecting passengers Sofia will hit a ceiling. There is only so much natural growth a certain market can stimulate. Same with BEG but thanks to Air Serbia we can exceed our natural expectations and grow beyond what's expected of a certain market.
In a way, BEG's future is tied to Air Serbia.
In 2014 alone trade between Austria and Kazakhstan was valued at €3.1 billion and there are currently over 140 joint Austrian-Kazakh companies.
But sure, you are right... Air Serbia should fly to Kazakhstan so as to offer connections for three daily passengers heading to TIV and DBV. Not to mention that it can offer connections to southern Italy via Aviolet that is a charter carrier which doesn't operate any scheduled flights.
I do like your logic. Fly two times per week to Central Asia to offer connections to Tivat but ignore a massive market such as ATH. Cool.
@11:38 AM i was thinking that they have a small number of overlaps in passengers they are serving. they might be competing in numbers, but is a big question of they compete for the same audience. SOF growth is mostly o-d pax. and thessaloniki, well, they are similar only in numbers.
and they definitely have more overlaps with zagreb, so why diminish and dismiss them as rivals??? because we like to add more fuel to raging stupidity in relations between two countries?
A good OU CEO should be asking themselves how did an airline not far from us add and extra 1 million passengers in three years. If they could do it why couldn't we!?
If OU doesn't make it then there won't be any transfers at ZAG, no matter how great the new terminal might be.
tu nista ne mozete i Kucka kad smenite.
That is why it is much better to have 10 million passengers with zero profit (than 5 million with huge profit) who will bring to local economy much more money and benefits.
Let me give you example of LCC. Today short break tourists (and most of modern younger tourists up to 55 years are short break) are used to come to city with LCC. So without LCC there would be no huge number of short break tourist in city. And they don't fly with LCC because they don't have money. They just don't want to spent a lot of money for 2 hours flying and instead they spend it on good hotel, food, drink, rent'a'car, shopping... And short break tourist spent huge amount of money in those 2-3 days in city. That is much bigger benefit for local economy that just tax on airport.
"...SOF might be recording crazy numbers but I don't think it will overtake BEG..."
Unfortunately, Sofia is going to surpass Belgrade by the end of the year.
At the end of November the difference between the two was around 72.000 passengers with Sofia overtaking Belgrade by 100.000 passengers in November. The same could one expect in December, so...
BEG competitors are not related to size, but how many passengers they can take out of Belgrade, or Belgrade can take from their market. In this point of view SJJ was never, but never any competition to BEG. It was always just and only BEG (ZAG, LJU, VIE, IST) feeding destinations.
So, there are two types of airport competitors to Belgrade:
1. Airports near to Belgrade who try to attract passengers from Belgrade or part of market is in same target aria for both airports. Those airports are: Budapest (Belgrade and North of Belgrade), Timisoara (Belgrade and East of Belgrade), Niš (Belgrade and South of Belgrade) Tuzla and Osijek (North and East Bosnia, Slavonia), even Sofija (South Serbia) and Zagreb (Slavonia). Of course, some of them are so small to attract just few hundred passengers (Osijek from West Vojvodina), but some are important and attract several hundred thousands (Budapest, Timisoara and Niš because of LCC).
2. Airports that are direct competitors to BEG as they have same connected routes for feeding. And here biggest competition is IST (Turkish), VIE (Austrian), MUC and FRA (Lufthansa), Athens (Aegean), Prague (ČSA), ZAG (Croatia) and LJU (Adria). OU and JU have just two all year feeding destinations where they compete (SJJ and SKP), but in summer there is much more (PUY, SPU, DBV).
3. In same time some of airports takes some passengers from BEG feeding destinations because they are near to those destinations. And here ZAG is the biggest competition. Lot of passengers from Banja Luka still fly from ZAG as it is very near, and because of that does not use JU BNX-BEG feeding flights. Same think is with DBV for Tivat potential JU passengers. Also lot of Slovenian passengers (especially those South of Slovenia) use ZAG instead of LJU-BEG feeding route. Every new flights from ZAG are less potential passengers on ZAG-BEG route to feed BEG.
So to say that ZAG is not main competition to BEG is at least funny. I remember that CTN CEO had same illusions when he was "sure" JU will not be any competition to OU. To believe in such a thing can cost you in air business a lot. But, as I said I don't thing BEG CEO made here business statement but political one
ATH ima veliki aerodrom sa dobrim vezama. Treba da se iskonjoses da dobijes putnike odatle osim za NYC. Ako krece Astana imace putnici gde da idu osim BEG.
Spavaju po hostelima i sl. To je za siromasne zemlje kao Hrvatska i Srbija puno, ali sve je to proleterska beda koju crpi FR WIZZ. Kapitalizam i za njih ima sarenu lazu da se osete srecnim.
Иако Атина има одличан избор авио-компанија, тржиште је велико до те мере да има места за све.
Атина ће постати још лукративнија ако једног дана Ер Србија уведе летове за Чикаго.
I laughed when I read this. All three airlines are minimal players when it comes to connecting flights, JU is light years ahead of them.
There is no way in hell that they have bigger market in SJJ or SKP, than in BEG, but for some reason, OU is still in the early 1990s with Serbia.
Their main message is "we don't need you" and for some people it is still hard to see that it is a message of the past.
There is another misapprehension. That time when Serbia was completely politically isolated and in a total free-fall was an aberration, not a standard, as some people tend to believe. The sooner the people realize it, the better.
JU is using all that to its advantage.
Agrokor and other Croatian companies operate in real world.
I nadam se da ce se sve ostvariti to i da ce BEG imati 5,5 Mil pax.
INN-NS
Austria (Austrian Airlines and parent): dominate legacy connections to primary airports and transfers within Europe and Long Haul
Hungary (Wizz Air): dominate LCC point to point connections to mostly secondary airports
Why would anyone believe in conspiracy theories like this? Reality is completely different, right?
Ja govorim o short-break turistima, a to su poslovni ljudi koji zbog svog stila života i manjka vrememena godišnji odmor razdjele u više dijelova, pa ljeti odmaraju 7-10 dana, a par puta godišnje imaju kraće odmora po nekoliko dana (2-5). Takvih ljudi danas ima vrlo mnogo. Od juppyea do srednjeg staleža koji doslovce odlaze na provod u jeftinije gradove.
Bulgaria GDP 2015: 49 billion USD
Serbia GDP 2015: 36.5 billion USD
ČSA has fleet almost similar to Air Serbia, same size: 17 planes including one A330, and as in those are not leisure routes as those are served by their shareholder Travel Service size of fleet is same as Air Serbia. They have almost same number of destinations. But in same time they have connections via PRG which is much bigger than BEG. There they have connections to their partners: Travel Service (owner), Korean (owner) and 22 other airlines they have code-share with. Just combined to Travel Service (as owner of CSA they are de facto one company) they are bigger than all 4 exYU airlines together. CSA flies to Zagreb, Skopje, Dubrovnik, Bucharest and Beirut where they are direct competition to Air Serbia. To say that OK is minimal player comparing to JU is total ignorance.
And as I said, if one does not understand that LJU and ZAG are direct competitors to BEG (of course not the biggest one, but for sure they are) concerning number of potential passengers to use those as feeding or attracting out of BEG feeding routes than one is in illusion just like CTN CEO who does not see danger to OU from JU.
I made one article where I show that in most of market where JU has competition from OU or JP they are behind. How can one say that for example in SJJ OU is not attracting more passenger than JU if that is a fact, or in SKP where JP is winner. So, that means ZAG and LJU takes some passengers from BEG. For sure much more than SOF or SKG does, which BEG CEO mentioned as competition. Airports which does not have any feeding routes BEG has (exempt Varna).
8 A319
2 A320
1 A332
4 B733
6 Atr
Total: 21 aircraft
And no, Aviolet and Travel Service are not the same. Aviolet is basically Air Serbia with a different brand, no own website, no own IATA code... while Travel Service has all that.
PRG-BEY summer seasonal
BEG-BEY 5x in winter
PRG-SKP nothing yet
BEG-SKP daily
PRG-OTP 4 weekly*
BEG-OTP daily
*some flights operate with Atr, three hours
So how exactly is OK a more serious airline than JU? They don't even fly to London for the love of God.
I don't see who is the ignorant one here... Purger, King of Spin
will you publish an analysis over the recent deal EY/LH?
That is what Purger is again unable to figure out - his analysis is perfect assuming we are talking about Croatian airports. They need passengers rather than profit, because their LCC passengers are tourists?
And who uses lowcost to fly to BEG? Tourists who spend money on short breaks? Right, that's why almost all LCC routes from BEG are clone routes of legacy carriers aimed at diaspora. Take Wizz, for example - their only route that can be described as short break tourism route is LUT. Everything else is there to serve diaspora who want to visit their homeland at low cost - these guys don't come to spend any short break money.
2. And OK is not smaller Company. OK is company of same size as JU. Aviolet is charter division, part of business OK does not have any more, but insted of it Travel Servis does that as an owner of OK.
3. But even if OK is smaller than JU it is still competition. Number of frequencies is relevant but it still acumulates some passengers to OK.
4. By same logic that OK is not "serious" Company because it does not fly to London, one can say that JU does not fly to Munich, Madrid, Barcelona... That is not an argument.
Of course Diaspora is biggest number of passengers, especially in LCC. But still more than 30% of LCC passengers in BEG are tourists. But even if just Diaspora flies with LCC that is again huge benefit for local economy. Diaspora brings a lot of money home, if they have good and cheap connections they will travel back home several times per year, even month, will invest in houses and at the end will come back home with money they earn abroad. If not they will bring their families with them out of Serbia, and will be assimilated, never to come back. Responsible country wants Diaspora to come back as much as they can end to spend money in Motherland.
Aviolet is a charter division but the B733 are part of Air Serbia operations on a daily basis something that is not the case with CSA and Travel Service. So in a way JU offers far more seats and frequencies to key markets around. Air Serbia is a far more serious player than OK which has become a hopeless airline turning into a joke. We've all see their plans for PRG-ZAG-SKP.
Air Serbia is a bigger player than CSA is. Don't forget that OK doesn't even fly to ATH and until recently they didn't even fly to ZRH.
(Area north of Belgrade is called Vojvodina...)
Bulgaria GDP PPP 141,4 billion USD
Serbia GDP PPP per capita 14.928 USD
Bulgaria GDP PPP per capita 19.839 USD
Sofia GDP PPP per capita 26.600 USD
Belgrade GDP PPP per capita 21.461 USD
Sofia average wages 645 EUR
Belgrade average wages 585 EUR
Anonymous 9:09
Even if CSA is much smaller company than Air Serbia it is still a competition. As it is company which fly to big airport with huge connections to Travel Service, Korean and other 22 companies from PRG it is important competition. Let me point that PRG was just one of airports that I mention as competition. Which are real competition to BEG, as SOF and SKG for sure is not near to that.
Purger,
If you want to bring KE into this then we can also bring EY which has a much more convenient base than Korean and a much bigger and wider network. So JU is still better there and they actually sell two stop connections via AUH.
OK relies primarily on p2p passengers, connections are as big as at OU (proportionally). So even though they might offer some, they are so small that they shouldn't be counted as a serious player.
Also JU has 18 codeshare partners and it offers both flights to Asia, Africa and Australia via AUH AND it has flights to JFK and an interline with AA and B6
What a truly selfish comment. Since when does the world spin around you? Just because you don't fly anywhere Wizz does it means that they need to be kicked out? What about those 450.000 passengers that use them every year? Are they supposed to fly on JU and pay €300?