Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport is seeing a quicker than expected return of air traffic and demand with the airport to record 180 commercial aircraft movements today, with ninety departures and arrivals scheduled. Eurowings has inaugurated its new service between Stuttgart and the Serbian capital this morning following a sixteen-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, while Israeli carriers Arkia and Israir are also restoring operations from Tel Aviv after several months. Furthermore, Norwegian Air Shuttle has also returned to the Serbian capital for the first time since March 2020. Driving the growth in operations is also a record number of leisure flights which have now outstripped pre-pandemic levels. They are mainly being operated by Air Serbia, although Aegean Airlines and Nouvelle Air also have regular charters during the week. Overall, Hurghada is the most popular leisure destination with up to nine daily flights on select days.

Capacity and demand is still well below 2019 levels, however, a number of airlines are now restoring frequencies to the same volume of flights as prior to Covid-19, among which are Swiss and Qatar Airways, while others will increase their current frequencies in July including Aeroflot, Air France, Turkish Airlines, Aegean Airlines and Flydubai. Air Serbia itself will also grow its scheduled traffic from Belgrade by 29.4% from 1.612 flight operations in June to 2.086. During the month of July, Tivat will be the busiest scheduled route to and from Belgrade based on offered capacity with 59.628 seats on sale, followed by Zurich, Moscow, Frankfurt, Podgorica and Istanbul.

Belgrade Airport this morning

Belgrade expects to handle up to 50% of its 2019 traffic if the positive trends continue. “What we want is to prove to the world, starting with people in Serbia and Belgrade, that it is safe to travel and that they can travel again. Of course, it does not depend only on us. Conditions to enter other countries, isolation and tests need to be taken into account … so we are doing all we can to enable traffic from here. We can see some good signs right now. Airlines, starting with Air Serbia, are increasing their summer program with more flights and destinations so we are seeing things happen. We hope we will reach about 50% of our usual activity that we used to see in 2019. It still seems low so it’s not the end. But if we are there, it will be a great achievement for us”, Belgrade Airport’s General Manager, Francois Berisot, previously said.