NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia and Turkish Airlines have expanded their Special Prorate Agreement (SPA) with new destinations in Ukraine: Kiev and Odessa. The expansion allows passengers to combine Air Serbia flights to Istanbul, as well as Turkish Airlines flights from its hub to the two Ukrainian cities. The current SPA also offers the possibility to travel via Istanbul to Antalya, Bodrum, Ankara, Dalaman, Gazipasa, Adana, Izmir, Kayseri, Konya and Trabzon in Turkey, as well as Tbilisi in Georgia and Baku in Azerbaijan. Air Serbia is not expected to restore its nonstop service between Belgrade and Kiev this summer. Flights between the two cities are maintained by Windrose Airlines while budget carrier SkyUp Airlines will commence operations on the route on March 30.
Why not add Tehran as well?
ReplyDeleteTK is not crazy to give JU (or anyone) access to one of its prime routes
ReplyDeleteAll their domestic routes are heavily loss making, the SPA cannot hurt them there
Tehran - Belgrade can be flown by Iranian airlines .
DeleteIf there was no Corona Mahan Air would have served that city pair one weekly with their A310 ...
TK is a brilliant airline, best and safest in the world.
ReplyDelete-1
DeleteLol. You've been living in another world.
DeleteI am sure that was sarcastic
DeleteIf priced right, this will turn passengers away from Windrose and SkyUp. In the end those two airlines from UKR will only hurt each other in the race to bottom on BEG service during covid.
ReplyDeleteUnless the market is stimulated by lower fares. Competition leads to success.
DeleteStimulating the market by lower fares didn't work for FR & W6 during covid. Smarter airlines would learn from that.
DeleteYes but they tried to do it in highly restrictive markets. Ukraine-Serbia is kind of free in those terms.
DeleteJU could not fill a nonstop plane before covid. Now that TK-JU can offer very low prices between Serbia and Ukraine, there won't be enough money to be made for the other two airlines. 100% loss making! Let's make a bet!
DeleteWell Windrose is boosting Belgrade so there must be some sort of demand.
DeleteIs there any legal obstacle for launching a flight between Ankara and Belgrade?
ReplyDeleteQatar had a stopover there several years ago, I wonder were they able to sell flights on that segment
No they were not
DeleteTraffic rights are only allowed at the moment between BEG and IST, maximum 14x weekly frequencies by any carriers. Not sure is Pegasus operates from SAW thanks to an exception or if it's included in the bilateral
DeleteKK was previously using traffic rights that JU gave them before going bankrupt
That route was chosen when ESB and BEG were still new additions to their network. QR used to do that a lot with their new routes. For a while, the routing was SOF-BEG before each city was deemed to "deserve" its own flight. Even ZAG was via BUD.
DeleteThey like to experiment with new routes in Africa now after the blockade has been lifted, and many of them involve a shuttle flight. MPM used to be via JNB, ZNZ and JRO via DAR, and many more. Their first flights to DPS were via SIN, and LGK via PEN.
None of this means anything really, it's just a simple way for them to try out new destinations with a lower level of risk.