Air Serbia’s transatlantic service one year on

Today marks a year since Air Serbia launched its first transatlantic service between Belgrade and New York with the carrier upbeat on the route’s future prospects. Over the past year, the airline operated 204 flights between the two cities and says it has witnessed strong and growing passenger load factors. “Air Serbia is delighted to be celebrating one year of successful operations to New York, where we began flying on June 23, 2016. Our flight was widely anticipated in Serbia and Southeast Europe for two reasons: it reconnected Serbia to the US with the first Serbian-operated flight since 1992, and it established the only year-round transatlantic air link to the US originating in the region”, an Air Serbia spokesperson told EX-YU Aviation News. They added, “It is especially satisfying to see that the mix of traffic is balanced, with 47% of guests originating from North America and 53% coming from Europe. The reaction from the Serbian diaspora in North America has been exceptionally positive, as predicted, and the service has also been welcomed with open arms by communities from other countries of the former Yugoslavia”.

The airline has worked hard to market the flights in the wider region, with the service proving particularly popular with travelers from Montenegro and Albania. “The flight has captured strong travel demand from countries neighbouring Serbia, with high volumes of connecting traffic from Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Macedonia and Croatia. This has driven the growth of tourism arrivals from America, and we are particularly seeing a large number of holidaymakers who are combining a visit to Belgrade with an onward trip to the Adriatic coast”, Air Serbia said. Over the past twelve months, the Serbian carrier has concluded partnerships with jetBlue, which allows passengers to connect from Belgrade to major cities across the States with one stop in New York, as well as American Airlines, which has opened up travel options for passengers flying to the mid-West and cities which are heavily populated with people who originate from the Balkans, such as Cleveland.

Ethnic travel agents in the United States have said that following an initially slow response by the flying public to the Air Serbia service, bookings and interest have significantly picked up. Travel agency Axioma Travel, which caters to the ethnic market and diaspora from the former Yugoslavia in the US, told EX-YU Aviation News, “Last year’s launch of New York – Belgrade flights was highly anticipated but at the same time met with quite a bit of scepticism. By the time ticket sales started, many potential customers had already purchased tickets on other carriers. Others waited as they were afraid the flights would be late, subject to government approval, and that the on board service would be poor. For its part, Air Serbia was slow to roll out competitive interline agreements to link JFK with points where ethnic customers live”. However, Fedja Stepanovich, the head of Axioma, noted, “Since the start of flights in June of last year, Air Serbia’s sales team worked with the agent community to develop programs and incentives to raise brand awareness, improve interline links, and, most importantly, listen to customers and agents about what was needed to boost sales. News of the impressive on-time record and great on board service quickly spread through the ethnic community and the phones started to ring”. He added, “In the same period this year, Axioma Travel's sales on flight JU500/501 have grown almost tenfold. Customers from cities like Phoenix, Cleveland and Jacksonville for the first time in several decades now have a one-stop flight to Belgrade. And they started to line up to buy the tickets. On many flights this June we have booked forty, fifty or even sixty passengers on a single flight”.

Questions have been raised as to whether Air Serbia can sustain a large investment such as transatlantic operations, however, the airline says the route is a long-term commitment which will take several years before it reaches its full potential. The carrier has also generated revenue on the route from other streams such as cargo. “Air Serbia's cargo operations are performing above all expectations. The airline's uplift capacity to JFK, which is fifteen tonnes per flight on the Airbus A330, is in high demand. We are transporting a wide variety of goods to the US and onwards to Canada and countries in South America, including textiles from Romania, Italy and Turkey, automotive parts and gaming industry machines from Bulgaria, and Serbian fruits and mushrooms, to name a few. From the other direction, there are even regular shipments of cargo from Ecuador and Argentina being sent to the region on board our service from JFK”, the airline said. Going forward, local agents in the US say areas of improvement and opportunity include more progress in interline connections to other US cities, better timed schedules to Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Podgorica and capturing more passengers from Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and others that already had established one-stop connections (through Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Turkish Airlines etc) to Belgrade and other cities in the region.