Air Serbia to reduce Russia operations over external pressure

Air Serbia will reduce its operations from Belgrade to Russia due to pressure from abroad, Serbia’s President, Aleksandar Vučić, has said. He noted frequencies will be restored to previous levels, indicating flights between Belgrade and Moscow will likely run seven to eight times per week instead of the current fifteen weekly operations. The Serbian carrier has seen a significant surge in bookings from the Russian market after it became one of the only European carriers still able to operate into the country, leading it to add an additional seven weekly rotations to Moscow. The increase in demand has also had a ripple effect on the remainder of its network, filling up flights to Europe, particularly Cyprus, France, Switzerland and Italy. Foreign carriers flying out of Belgrade have also benefited from increased loads. Air Serbia is yet to revise its schedules.

A number of foreign carriers continue to operate into Moscow. Turkish Airlines has also increased its capacity to the Russian capital, while Emirates, Qatar Airways, Gulf Air and Etihad Airways continue to maintain services to Moscow. Finland's state-owned railway operator VR has said its two daily trains from St Petersburg to the Finnish capital of Helsinki are fully booked with 700 passengers arriving daily. Due to Russian Covid-19 restrictions, only Finnish and Russian citizens are allowed on the trains. The Finnish rail operator is negotiating with Russian authorities to allow other nationalities on board, as well as the introduction of a third daily train service. However, none have received as much scrutiny for their continued operations to Russia, nor garnered as much international media attention, as Air Serbia’s fifteen weekly flights from Belgrade to Moscow. Last Friday, an anonymous e-mail warned of a bomb on board one of Air Serbia’s flights to Moscow, with the author of the hoax threat expressing their dismay at Serbia’s relations with Russia.

Commenting on the matter, President Vučić said, “They say capacity has been doubled, that we are profiting from Ukrainian blood … The truth is that instead of one flight we have two. The way they are going on about it, you would think we have increased flights from 100 to 200. They are not criticising those that are members of NATO and that are partially in Europe, who have thirty times more flights than us, like Turkey. Why aren’t they criticising Gulf countries that have fifteen times more flights to Russia compared to us, instead, they are begging them for oil”? He continued, “No problem, we are going back to the old schedule with one flight per day, so no one can criticise us for making money. Is 30.000 euros an issue? Ok, no problem. We will keep these double frequencies for another five or six days as people have tickets already booked and then we will go down to one flight per day. Then they will be happy again”.

On the other hand, some carriers, which are not restricted from flying to Russia, have cancelled their flights to the country, including Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and Kazakhstan’s Air Astana. Both have cited issues over securing insurance for their aircraft while in Russia. Last week, Air Serbia was forced to suspend online ticket sales in Russia, directing customers to buy tickets through local tour operators. “Due to the suspension of servicing Visa and Mastercard cards in the Russian Federation, payments with cards issued by Russian banks are currently not possible. Air Serbia is working on finding an alternative option for online payments. In the meantime, you can buy tickets from our partners”, the company said.