France's ASL Airlines will introduce flights between Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Belgrade next summer season, becoming the third carrier to maintain services between the two cities. ASL Airlines France will commence two weekly flights from the French capital to Belgrade starting June 24, each Monday and Thursday, with its 148-seat Boeing 737-700 aircraft. Flights are initially planned to operate on a seasonal basis, until September 5. The carrier, which boasts a fleet of fifteen passenger and cargo aircraft, will compete directly against Air Serbia's thirteen weekly flights and Air France's daily service between the two cities, with the latter only recently announcing its return to Belgrade.
ASL Airlines France is a common visitor in Belgrade, with its Boeing fleet maintained by Jat Tehnika. ASL offers a buy on-board food and beverage service, while the lowest economy fares do not include checked-in baggage. The airline is aiming to attract point to point passengers on the route during the high season by offering lower fares than its competitors. In addition to Belgrade, ASL Airlines France maintains scheduled flights from Paris to Algiers and Tel Aviv, as well as a number of seasonal routes in France and Spain. The carrier, formerly known as Europe Airpost, focuses heavily on cargo transport. Tickets for its new Belgrade service are already on sale.
During the 2019 summer season, Belgrade will boast up to four daily flights between Belgrade and Paris on select days. In addition, low cost carrier Wizz Air maintains two weekly flights from the Serbian capital to Beauvais, which is some 85 kilometres north of central Paris. The developments come in the lead-up to the 25-year takeover of Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport by France's Vinci. The company recently finalised new collective agreements with the airport's staff members and is expected to take full control of the airport next month upon the payment of its 450 million euro fee to the Serbian government.
Further flight details for ASL Airlines France's new Belgrade service can be found here.
Comments
Unless these guys count on attracting p2p passengers with low prices, of course. We may see another 'Battle of Vienna'.
We receive the information about the new routes to the main European capitals almost on weekly basis - amazing!
And Vinci has not taken it over yet. Well done!
1--4--7
BEG-BVA 06.30-09.05
BVA-BEG 09.35-12.05
The only worst thing that could have happened to them was easyJet launching ORY flights.
It will bring passengers from BEG great oppportunities as this company is much better than W6 or FR
I believe 6.4 is reallistic
Aeroflot +7
Lufthansa +7
Aegean +1
Air France +7
ASL +2
Etihad +2
I am sure LO will also increase their frequency.
INI took a lot of passengers who otherwise would have used BEG and probably ASL to travel.
So the Government of Belgrade took over the airport and replaced the hugely successful management team with party faithful who will do what is best for the Republic of Belgrade.
Those were very lucrative contracts, I hope they don't cut back on those.
BEG-BVA 12.930
BEG-CDG 47.171
If BEG feeds Serbia then LON feeds UK
But INI can also feed the whole south taking it's slice from the revenue cake.
The incompetent management of that airport simply did nothing to attract airlines.
In INI now the same situation is happening.
Only it is by design and not due to incompetence.
A good example of this is LX which said they might add more flights next summer.
Anyway, I am rooting for Laudamotion to launch next! JU, OS, Gea Tours, Fudex... could all use some competition.
Point being here that airlines that have scissor hubs usually tend to do that so it's nothing new that JU does it as well.
Anyway, if JU is too expensive for you then you can fly on ASL or Air France while you could have flown on Wizz Air for many years now. So what's the problem here exactly?
Sure, it is also possible.
Thanks to them, MMX and soon NRN will be gone. But anway...long live Belgrade Airlines and co.
SOF slashed the airport taxes and registered a profit of 41% in 2017:
https://tech2.org/bulgaria/sofia-airport-with-a-profit-of-10-million-companies/
The biggest achievement would be flying on this route from June to September.
I hope I am wrong
Laudamotion in BEG - well, it would shake all the guys you mentioned, but does not smell like that yet...
Why wasn't either AF nor ASL given to INI? Or give 1 to Beg and the other INI to have equal share?
INI could have had a second legacy carrier together with LX or could be connected to a primary airport such as CDG.
The proof was the BEG consession when the 12 million hailed traffic was set and INI prevented from never surpassing 1 million.
Once the airlines arrived to INI, the growth was immense and the fear started to grow.
Gos took over and stopped 2 destinations already.
Are you for real? I would suggest you check the calendar and note that we are in the 21st century. No one can tell either airline where to fly from or "give them" INI.
Can we please try to avoid hyperbole? BEG makes in two weeks what INI makes in a year.
INI has a decent traffic and decent airlines. And yes, it's generally very very cheap to fly to/from Nis but only to slected destinations such as VIE, BTS, DTM.
BEG is still considered very expensive.
'Why wasn't either AF nor ASL given to INI? Or give 1 to Beg and the other INI to have equal share?'
How can BEG and INI get an equal share when market demand isn't the same? While we are at it, what else would you like to request in the name of equality? CPH? JFK? LHR?
I payed 1025 eur, one way, ecconomy, CDG,-BEG.
Gipsy company
CLJ has LH and OTP too.
SOB has LH and BUD too.
KRK has BA and WAW too.
VAR has OS and SOF too.
SKG has QR and ATH too.
I will not put LX because of the frequency numbers per week.
All the above have at least 1 daily flight.
BEG-ZRH is like 38 weekly, while BEG-ZRH is 2 weekly. There you go.
Airport still enjoys good numbers. Similar to BEG, there are many other frequeny increases such as QR, TK, LH, SU, BA, U2 new UK routes, etc, etc.
Economics 101
Yes but equally so, JU no longer sells undervalued fares, those days are long gone.What's available out there is the real thing. Just because transfer flights tend to be cheaper than point to point doesn't mean they are loss-making.
Southern and eastern Serbia: GDP per capita 3.346, Nisava region 2.5% of the GDP, 2 weekly flights to ZRH.
To me this seems about right. Like I wrote earlier, the issue here is that the south is still relatively underdeveloped.
Economics 101
The south is not the capital, but it still has room for much more.
There are currently TWO HUNDRED hotels available starting from 11€ for a double room!
There are many companies: Raiffaisen, Peaksel, Seavus IT and many more which can attract business travellers too. They can avoid the long queues in BEG and avoid road to SOF or SKP because it has less connections to European capitals.
As for BUD, I don't care about them so I never comment on them unless when speaking about their shared catchment area with BEG.
That said, thanks for remembering me... even in your moments of utter bitterness. :)
You can't call a route profitable only after you exclude a bunch of necessary costs to make the flights possible.
You cant say than a flight is possible if you only deduct the cost of fuel, overflight fees and crew salaries.
For a flight, any flight at any airline to materialize you need to pay for aircraft, sale offices, marketing, management, maintenance, to pay for catering, pension contributions, call centers, amortize your assets and so much more.
So lets keep this discussion factual.
Additional costs such as HQ employees, loans, office leases... are not factored in, nor are things like loans and so on. Those are paid for by the revenue generated from the extra ticket revenue, that is the one that is above the break-even levels...or from the sale of assets and so on.
Sorry Nemjee but you just scored a wonderful auto-goal.
Adios.
In conclusion, artificial stimulation can occur in other ways as well but I will give you this, subsidies can be one of many forms.
So where you draw the line that the demand becomes 'artificial'?
There is no such a thing and that is my point.
There is demand and then there is stimulated demand, but demand nevertheless.
Is their growth and numbers also 'artificial'?
No one forced those pax to board the plane for Sofia and pay the ticket, which is the only case in which we might use that term.