Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport’s modest recovery in June has been affected by the introduction of travel bans and flight restrictions from core markets in the European Union. The airport registered 1.008.088 passengers through its doors during the first half of the year, down 61.4% on 2019. Since July, the few markets in the EU which had reopened for Serbia’s nationals have again closed, while Italy, Poland, Romania and Austria introduced flight bans, although the latter was lifted at the start of August. As a result, Air Serbia was forced to reduce its network through July and August, with a number of routes set to resume towards the end of the month. Wizz Air has also delayed the expansion of its base operations in the city, with the launch of nine new routes now scheduled for March of next year.
| Month | PAX | Change (%) |
|---|---|---|
| JAN | 403.145 | ▲ 16.0 |
| FEB | 356.729 | ▲ 13.0 |
| MAR | 163.568 | ▼ 56.0 |
| APR | 5.894 | ▼ 98.7 |
| MAY | 9.666 | ▼ 98.1 |
| JUN | 69.086 | ▼ 88.5 |
Charter flights to Egypt and Turkey now account for a notable share of Belgrade Airport’s traffic, with the two countries having no entry restrictions or regulations. Yesterday alone saw eight flights to Hurghada and Antalya, which are being operated on a daily basis. Among scheduled carriers, Air Cairo, Air France, Austrian Airlines, Belavia, easyJet, Etihad Airways, Flydubai, Lufthansa, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Pegasus Airlines, Qatar Airways, Swiss, Transavia and Turkish Airlines, in addition to Air Serbia and Wizz Air, have resumed operations to the Serbian capital, albeit at a significantly reduced rate. Aegean Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines and TAROM are set to restore services in September, depending on entry restriction regulations. Both the Greek and Romanian carriers flew to Belgrade in late June and early July.
Following the tentative coordination of the lifting of travel restrictions at EU level as of mid-June, traffic recovery has been slower than expected across the continent. As a result, passenger traffic across European airports declined by 78% in July compared to the same month last year. This translated into an additional 208 million passengers lost, bringing the total passenger loss since the start of the year at 969 million. Over the past two weeks, the pace of recovery has further slowed down. This is due to several states re-imposing travel restrictions. Olivier Jankovec, the Director General of Airports Council International Europe, said, “The recovery is far too slow-paced and uncertain. Despite desperate efforts to trim down their costs, Europe’s airports are burning cash at the height of the summer. Revenues are weak because of the combination of low volumes with rebates and incentives to airlines to attract and incentivise air traffic. Considering the seasonality of demand, this does not bode well for the coming months. If the recovery does not accelerate significantly, many airports will simply run out of money”.
The number of airlines flying to BEG isn't that bad actually.
ReplyDeleteBut most of them have 1, 2 or maximum 3 flights per week. Mostly almost to nothing.
DeleteActually that's not true. MOST of them don't have 1 or two flights per week.
Delete+1 Anon 09:15.
DeleteThere is still a long way to recover. LO for example is now 3 weekly and so is LH to FRA and QR to DOH. All used to be daily.
Better soemthing than nothing.
DeleteBEG at least did not lose so many airlines as ZAG
Yes, but ZAG remained open when BEG was closed. So it's almost the same situation. Current traffic difference is not that big.
DeleteRemaining open means that there are better chances airlines not to stop flying to your airport.
DeleteIf you close the airport as BEG was closed airlines do not have actually any choice but to stop flying.
Therefore I am very surprised that ZAG (despite Croatia does not suffer from travel ban) lost so many airliners.
Because most demand was artificially created, ie it relied heavily on non-organic traffic caused by tourist arrivals. Now that's gone it will show how much real, organic demand there is there.
DeleteAgree.
DeleteAnd now we can actually see how artificial was comparision between total air traffic in Croatia (long and warm coast as the biggest magnet for tourism) and Serbia (could count only on organic growth).
Actually Serbia hasn't been as organic due to the booming, rapidly growing number of transfer passengers that have been using BEG as a stopover when travelling from one place to another.
Deleteso tourist charters from BEG to wherever are not artificial but only those to croatian cost are artificial . lol the stuff you read on blogs
DeleteSerbian chartes show the ability of Serbian people to travel on Serbian air carrier to the foreign countries. It is organic.
DeleteChartes to Croatia are the arrivals of foreign nationalities coming to Croatia with their own air carriers as OU can't cover that part of traffic.
Not the same
Charters from Serbia are filled with people who live and work here so it was demand that ws organically created by Serbia. The more the economy improves the more demand for air travel it creates. Very simple.
DeleteZAG remained open serving bigger EU capitals. No big mystery here. There were no restrictions for Croatia.
DeleteSMFH
DeleteWell unfortunately from today Italy requires PCR test for Al coming from Croatia. That will impact tourist numbers on the coast.
DeleteWell unfortunately, Wizz postponed opening its new BEG routes to March next year. This will impact on figures in the capital.
DeleteHow can it impact when those flights didn't exist last year either. Losing 7 airlines which flew last year to your airport does on the other hand.
DeleteI think it is more than 7.
DeleteRecovery would be quicker if there were Montenegro flights.
ReplyDeleteProbably from next month.
DeleteSerbia is about to introduce PCR tests, let's see if Montenegro will be on the list of countries. If it is then I don't expect more than daily flights to both TGD and TIV by JU and YM.
DeleteThere are rumors that Montenegro will announce border reopening on Friday. As I see, JU and YM have scheduled flights starting this Sunday.
Delete* sorry meant starting this Saturday.
DeleteI guess we will find out tomorrow. Would help both sides (airports and airlines).
DeleteOf course, whoever is following the situation in MNE knows they are about to go bankrupt. Government even had to take a loan to pay for the everyday expenses. Without tourism they have limited income.
DeleteEven the WHO has called for travel restrictions to be scrapped.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the map, Serbia had the second lowest decline in passenger numbers behind Norway.
ReplyDeleteAfter also Armenia, Albania, Russia and Belarus, which makes it 6th (at least, if I didn't miss some)
DeleteNope. Look at Hungary, Belarus and Albania.
DeleteAfter all, Belavia is the size of JU, if not a bit bigger.
Also looking at the map, Croatia has the highest decline in whole Europe, even though they never closed (ZAG) airport. This clearly shows that Croatian market depends on tourists a lot.
DeleteCorrect
DeleteThe growth in JAN and FEB was impressive. Shame the year turned out like this.
ReplyDeleteTaking all everything in consideration especially travel ban that neighbouring EU countries do not have, BEG is doing great and much better that those who don't suffer because of travel restrictions.
ReplyDeleteWe see here than Serbia had the lowest traffic decrease among all ex-Yu countries.
ReplyDeleteYes but let's see if that's the case in July and August.
DeleteIt would be the case if all ex-Yu countries have the same travel ban Serbia has.
DeleteIf not comparison does not reflect real situation as the base for comparison is not the same
lol you turn it always on your side. reality is reality
DeleteReality is that apples are apples and oranges are oranges.
DeleteYou simply can't compare them.
passenger numbers are passanger numbers
DeleteI agree with you here
Delete2020
BEG ==> 1.008.000
Decrease in Serbia -61.4%
2020
ZAG ==> 547.735
Decrease in Croatia - 81.1%
sure but stop trolling all morning about not real situations
DeleteThe situation is not the same. It is reality you refuse to see.
DeleteDespite that reality BEG had better results. I understand you do not like to see it on that way but it certainy has nothing to do with trolling.
Just look at numbers after lockdown which are important when we are talking about recovery. Split and Belgrade had similar numbers in July 2019., while this year BEG had 2,5 times less passangers then Split.
DeleteYou can't know that since Belgrade hasn't published its statistics for July.
DeleteAnd BEG July numbers won't be known before October 2020.
DeleteSo please do not base your assumption based on Purger's expectations.
Nothing but expectations.
Is it realistic for BEG to handle at least 2 mil passengers this year?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately it is not realistic for BEG to handle 2 mil pax in 2020. In July they had less than 120K pax, and in August traffic volume is the same, means less regular flights and more charters.
DeleteHow on earth can you know how many passengers they had in July
DeleteThe charter traffic to Turkey and Egypt is really crazy.
ReplyDeleteEgypt charters will operate in winter too because of demand.
DeleteIt sucks that we can't see charter flights info on flightradar24.
DeleteAir Serbia yesterday had 3 flights to Antalya, 4 to Hurghada, 1 to Sharm and Air Cairo had its flight from Hurghada.
DeleteI know I was seeing there flights BEG-AYT
DeleteWhy not?
Delete@9.18
DeleteWait till the weekend. There will be whole lot more charters :)
Yes, you can. I personally saw them last night. They were cuming from SSH and HRG. Aviolet too.
DeleteI saw them too and I have a BEG filter activated on there.
DeleteThis boom in charters in both BEG and other European countries only goes to show how COVID will not force people to reevaluate their travels and to eventually reduce them. Once restrictions are down, air travel will resume.
DeleteI checked now and it seems only you can't track them.
DeleteFor example there was yesterday JU9203 to AYT but FR24 can't see it in flying history.
Once Covid is over people's wallets will be empty and there will be less travel because of economic reasons.
DeleteThere will be LESS demand, so there will be demand overall for more and more flights to be introduced. You make it sound as if all countries will have their economies collapse. Look at Turkey, even though their currency is in free fall, number of Turkish tourists in Serbia increased in June once flights were introduced (compared to May).
DeleteNobody knows what will be.
DeleteWe had in the past cases that Serbs took credit from bank only to be able to travel to sea coast.
We see now that people suffer from economic + pandemic situation. When the pandemic is gone there will be only economic. So therefore I believe it could be only better than it is now.
@9.20 SMFH
Deletethat was for 9.30 obv
Delete09:35
DeleteCheck today at noon
JU9902
Serbia always had strong outbound demand as Serbs travel A LOT! Just look at how much the market has developed since December 2009 when visas were removed. Now, as the economic situation keeps on improving so will demand grow. That is why airlines have not rushed to suspend BEG, their yields are probably good over here.
Delete@9.34 are you for REAl. number of turkish tourists in June in Serbia is 1087 thats 8% of last year!!!!!! EIGHT PERCENT from last years number. keep on trolling
DeleteAnon 09.47 did you bother to read what he said? He compared the numbers to May. How about you read what people write before trolling with your hateful comments.
Deleteyou compare to May when there was zero tourism?
Delete@9.42 lol
DeleteAlso, let's not forget that Egypt is way much cheaper and affordable to Serbs who can't afford to go to South Greece, Italy, Spain and Croatia, Nice, etc. Egypt is like Chalkidiki or Kusadasi - low cost destinations.
DeleteTurkey is dirt-cheap if you go with a charter thats why theres demand from all yugo countries. "economic situation is improving" must be a party troll when i read stuff like that
DeleteAnon 10.02 flights to Turkey were resumed in May.
DeleteTurkey has millions of tourists from the west especially from Scandinavia, Britain, France...
DeleteOk, economy will collapse, all airlines will go bankrupt, people will completely stop travelling and lock themselves in their homes forever. Is that what you wanna hear?
DeleteThe only reason Turkey sounds cheap is their currency lost %200 value against USD in 6 years.
DeleteThere is every type of holidays in Turkey, probably even the most luxurious and expensive ones you can't find anywhere in Europe.
Remember Antalya itself has more 5 star hotel than whole Spain lol
Lol true
DeleteProbably all of those charters JU had to Spain, Italy, Crete, Rhodos as well as regular lines to SPU, DBV, PUY and ZAD show how much Serbs can't afford it
DeleteThe real reason behind JU introducing NCE was the fact that Serbs can't afford it.
DeleteNCE is actually quite a prestigious destination. Not everyone can afford the French Riviera.
DeleteThe charter flights can perfectly be seen on Flightradar24.
DeleteAll you have to know is the aircraft registration number .
DeleteIf you type them into your Google Search Flightradar shows their flight paths .
No problem at all .
Croatia -81.1%
ReplyDeleteThat is huge. Biggest decrease in Europe.
Actually, I would say it's way much worse in Greece and Cyprus.
DeleteGreece has maybe 30+ airports and 2,5 times bigger than Croatia in population. 77% is a lot! The same goes for LCA being such a busy airport.
Cyprus is not a surprise, for two months you were not allowed to leave your house without an sms permission from the police. Airports were shut down and there were no flights besides repatriation ones. Same situation as in Greece more or less.
DeleteAlso don't forget that until August, Brits were required to quarantine themselves before entering Cyprus. Flights are only resuming now, Jet2 announced resumption of charters two days ago.
How is it worse in Greece? Greece had 5.6 million pax during H1. As you said it has 2.5 the population, so Greece is doing about 5 times better than Croatia.
DeleteLast week I was in Cyprus, the Turkish part, it felt like an abandoned place; they were rarely some tourists.
ReplyDelete^^ Sorry I meant to comment on Nemjee's post.
DeleteDon't know about the occupied areas but in the Republic hotel occupancy is like 20% to 30%. Very bad. Then again it's not surprising, BEG-LCA was supposed to be 11 weekly now but at the moment we have just one flight a week which is mostly used by transfers. It's pretty much the same situation with other markets out there.
DeleteTill Covid19 (middle of March):
ReplyDelete917874 Belgrade
607378 Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik
From start of Covid19:
163214 Belgrade
442335 Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik
It is 2.7 times more passengers what was last time in 1999.
What does this have to do with anything in today's article? Also you don't know Belgrade's July figures.
DeleteIf you need 3 airports to have more traffic than 1 in the middle of a global pandemic and people are mostly banned from travelling from that other airport then congratulations. I would be rather embarrassed.
DeleteYes, but similar to Hungary, Serbia has 1 main airport while Croatia technically has 3. It's quite normal to see these figures. Yet, SPU is the busiest airport in ex-Yu in summer.
Deletewasn't last year actually, even in summer.
DeleteYou forgot that the types of airports are totally different.
DeleteIf you want to compare BEG with any airport in Croatia it is ZAG and not SPU or DBV.
If you want to compare some coastal airport as SPU or DBV you need to do it with LCA, PMI, AYT.
Summer 2019
DeleteSplit
JUN - 513706
JUL - 723048
AUG - 672262
Belgrade
JUN - 602466
JUL - 734898
AUG - 757062
So how was Split the busiest?
It happened only once in July 2018, but they stick to it "kao pijan plota"
DeleteYou have forgot to mention something very important. Those three Croatian airports have lost 4.25 million's in same period Belgrade has lost 2.36 millions! Covid period 03-07-2020
DeleteAll I'm seeing is that according to your stats one Serbian airport still had more pax than three "prestigious" Croatian ones (despite Serbia being outside the EU, not being a summer holiday destination and so on). BEG is still ahead by over 30k pax.
DeleteThe article is about decline at Belgrade, yet all the comments are trolling jealousy of Croatia....haha is someone suffering from a sligh inferiority complexe?!
ReplyDeleteI personally hope Belgrade becomes the center of the civilized world, the HUB of all airlines HUBS, because I would the be a proud neighbor LOL
Comments are about Croatia because people kept comparing BEG to all Croatian airports combined (all the while citing random figures "that dude" posted wherever), so some ppl decided to settle things by showing the true "stellar" Croatian stats.
DeleteYes, it is SPU. New terminal, widebodies, 85% European network coverage. Primary destinations. Legacy and LCC + domestic.
DeleteCroatia as a country will ALWAYS be stronger then Serbia....sorry is this bothers anybody...and yes, tourist passengers count, LOL how they became a separate category in the eyes of some haha
DeleteDid you compare that with BEG? Direct flight to New York, 6.1 million passengers in 2019, businest month ever in all of ExYu, most cargo ever in all of ExYu, direct service to four continents, 16 jet bridges, primary destinations, legacy and LCCs. In a couple of years when construction is complete, two runways, 28 jet bridges, expanded and renovated terminal with 15 mil passengers per year capacity. SPU is no match for BEG.
DeleteMy dear friend, Croatia had close to 12 million passengers, close to double that of Serbia, so please stop embarrassing yourself.
DeleteSerbia will never in my lifetime have more air passengers then Croatia, any other arguments are a non sense.
Well my dear friend, we'll see this year. The winter is coming and it appears August won't be as awesome as you hoped since the pandemic is booming again there. I will point out one more time: during the first seven months of this year, BEG had more pax than three busiest Croatian airports combined.
DeleteCroatia reached to KE, AC, EK, AA levels, mon ami.
DeleteIf you pay enough you will get any airline in the world to fly to Croatia. Not in my lifetime is something many countries could have said to UAE in 1980 but look at passenger numbers UAE had in 2019 compared to many of those countries.
DeleteOf course BEG will have more passengers than Croatia at some point. You know why? Because BEG is open to everyone, both legacy and LCC. If it weren't for corona this year we would have have 7 million for sure. JU is not going anywhere and they are firmly committed to building a hub and in boosting their transfer passenger numbers. On top of that Wizz Air is attracting more and more passengers from the region which is how they expect to fill three A321s.
DeleteAnyway, for many aviation fans in Serbia, Croatia is not a target. We are comparing ourselves with more relevant markets like SKG, SOF, OTP or BUD. Those are our competition, not a few regional tourist heavy airports. You need to compare yourself with Rhodes, Chania, Zakynthos and so on.
Bulgaria will reopen border with Serbia on 16th of August so we will see more passengers to Sofia.
ReplyDeleteJU actually increased its frequencies from 5 to 6 weekly to SOF.
DeleteThat's great, I am still sad they never managed to make those night flights work like they did in OTP or SKG. Nice to see them rebuilding their regional network though.
DeleteInteresting that there is an Icelandair B767 flight to LAX from BEG tomorrow. Anyone know what's that all about? It's a passenger aircraft, not cargo.
ReplyDeleteGlobalisation in reverse, I love it. Bring back the golden age of travel when it was more expensive.
ReplyDeleteThe prediction seems realistic. Hopefully by summer the virus is under control somewhat.
ReplyDelete