Long haul leisure charters present opportunity for Air Serbia

Air Serbia has seen its charter operations exceed pre-pandemic levels this year, with the airline operating over 1.000 leisure flights as Serbian holidaymakers head to Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Tunisia. This year’s demand for charters has seen the airline run up to eight daily rotations to places such as Hurghada and Antalya. However, interest in far-away destinations has also been growing with tour operators significantly diversifying their travel packages over the past five years to offer holidays to Thailand, Bali, the Seychelles and India prior to the pandemic. Since Covid-19, demand has surged for places such as Zanzibar, the Maldives and Mexico where there are few travel restrictions in place.

In 2016 Air Serbia considered introducing long haul leisure flights in order to better utilise its sole Airbus A330-200 aircraft over the winter months when it maintains fewer frequencies on its scheduled New York service. This August, the carrier’s A330-200 has operated a total of 44 scheduled movements, while the figure will stand at just sixteen in November. The National Association of Travel Agencies of Serbia (YUTA) told EX-YU Aviation News that the Serbian carrier was exploring long haul charters, in partnership with YUTA, several years ago. “Keeping in mind that YUTA is one of Air Serbia's biggest partners in charter travel through our members, Air Serbia suggested a meeting with tour operators where we would discuss possible charters to far-off destinations. At the time, tour operators were interested in long haul charter flights to Thailand and Cuba during the winter months, as there is sufficient demand for those markets. The realisation of these charters was to be carried out during the winter season”, YUTA said. Ultimately, the idea never came to fruition.

Air Serbia said at the time that the figures didn’t add up. “There are very few destinations where you can fly the A330 that are going to be appealing to tour operators. Serbia is a price sensitive market and when we gauged interest for charters to Thailand - which is further to fly to than New York - the economics required to make it breakeven were too large. Another option we considered was the Caribbean, but that also can't be sustained from a market such as Serbia”, the national carrier previously told EX-YU Aviation News. Several years later, data indicates that there is a sufficient number of passengers originating from Belgrade to potential leisure hotspots. The Serbian government has inked a number of Air Service Agreements and Memorandums over the past few years with countries which could be of interest for potential long haul charter operations including the Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. These agreements set the legal framework for air operations between the two sides.

Two-way indirect traffic between Belgrade and select destinations in 2019