Air Serbia will operate over 1.000 charter flights this summer season in cooperation with local tour operators. Today alone, the airline is running nine charters to the Egyptian resort town of Hurghada, offering almost 1.300 departing seats as the Easter and school holidays begin. Another twenty Hurghada charters are expected to operate over the next week. The national airline will commence leisure flights to Turkey in May and a number of other destinations in June, including those in Greece, Italy and Tunisia. Charters to the latter two will operate for the first time in almost three years with the carrier to serve the regions of Sicily and Calabria in Italy.
Commenting on its lucrative charter operations, Air Serbia’s General Manager for Commercial and Strategy, Boško Rupić, said, “It is our pleasure that, together with our tour operator partners, we can start renewing charter services, and we are particularly happy about the expected increase in the number of flights. It is a fact that global events have led to an unprecedented increase in jet fuel prices, and consequently the increase in the price of charter flights, but the good news is that it is possible to find tour packages that fit everyone’s budget”. He added, “If travellers plan on time, they will be able to select their holiday spot from a large number of destinations to which we operate flights, in accordance with their abilities and wishes. Existing demand shows that tourists are already planning vacations to attractive destinations which they can reach easily via direct flights from Belgrade and Niš”.
Turkey traditionally holds the top spot on the list of most popular summer destinations in Air Serbia’s network. Egypt, which has seen significant growth year after year, comes second. The carrier will also maintain charter services from Niš to Turkey and Egypt this summer. “The most popular with travellers are flights to destinations in Turkey - Antalya, Bodrum, Dalaman and Alanya, followed by Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as a large number of Greek islands such as Crete, Rhodes, Samos, Skiathos, Corfu, Kefalonia, Kos and Zakynthos”, Air Serbia concluded. The carrier has also seen a significant number of bookings by tour operators on its scheduled operations this summer season, particularly on flights to Spain and Italy.
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Al Masria applied to operate flights to BEG this summer. Let's see how fast JU blocks them. I remember before covid they used to send their A330 to Belgrade.
Let them first fix what they have now before embarking on a new adventure.
Another issue is that they are rarely prepared for the summer season. They always play it safe and in the end they are short both on charter and regular traffic.
We are seeing that in BCN where this July and August they will offer the least seats from BEG.
Anyway, air traffic is heavily regulated and sometimes limiting competition had a purpose to keep the prices in the level that is sustainable for the current players. This way they get a chance to surfžvive and "taxpayers" the chance to have air connectivity on the long run.
Not saying that we have to agree with this approach, but things are not so black and white!
JU on the other hand is blocking any liberalization of the market between the two until they can add flights.
Look at poor Pegasus. They keep on requesting daily flights but keep on being turned down.
3 A380's in a premium heavy configuration, using EK as an example, is around 1550 seats, not 1300.
@10,52
YU-ARB is off to JFK today.
Russia until recently was limiting frequencies between Serbia and Russia, even though both SU and JU wanted the extra frequencies, hence why the A330 and B777 wasn't uncommon to see on the SVO-BEG route. When JU announced AER, tickets were not being sold as they were waiting for Russian approval. All Russian airlines seeking to launch international flights seek approval first from Rosaviatsia before applying elsewhere.
As for Turkey, they revoked JU's slots in IST when Jat rebranded as Air Serbia, forcing it into SAW. It was only after the Serbian government reacted by threatening to revoke the slots for TK and PC were they returned. So it's not just our DCV. TK is flying 3 daily IST-BEG because JU is flying KVO/INI-IST. Bilaterals are extremely limited between the 2 countries. These kind of restrictive bilaterals is seen in many countries including Germany, Poland, Canada, Australia, India.
Egypt is the only country out of the 3 countries you mentioned that I agree with your argument.
As for Turkey, of course they were kicked to SAW and rightfully so. TK is pissed off that JU is keeping a monopoly on charters and then they go restricting them from adding more frequencies and capacity. That move to SAW was a reactionary move.
They have and they did. JU operated a charter for an agency to PMI with YU-ARA which apparently wasn't as successful as planned. BCN is a scheduled destination, the extra seats JU is offering agencies is less than the capacity of an A319.
Na pitanje da li razmatraju uvođenje sezonske linije do Antalije, Karakaš je rekao da je Antalija tržište koje čvrsto drži Air Serbia i da sada ne postoje regulatorni uslovi da Anadolujet uđe na to tržište.
It was PMO. My mistake.
@LaneHotLane
I'm guessing either you don't live in Serbia or are an SNS member. Very out of touch with reality.
Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece all have these charters, including to long haul destinations. Bulgaria also gets winter charters to its ski resorts, something Serbia lost back in 2005 when Thompson removed their Kopaonik program and direct LGW-INI charters. 15 years later, Serbia hasn't attracted foreign winter tourists and charters, which would be great for JU in fighting the seasonality issues it has.
Salaries have increased, but so has the cost of living. Adjust salaries 10 years ago and the average cost of living to today. Remittances from our expat workers varies between 7-9% of our GDP and has remained at that level for over a decade, regardless of the growth of salaries and GDP. If GDP has grown and foreign remittances have remained at the same level, it means more money from our foreign workers is coming to Serbia each year.
Air travel has become cheaper in the mean time with increased competition. Packages have become cheaper making them more accessible for the average Serbian. It is also not uncommon for holiday packages to be sold in installments.
Scheduled flights are not all sold out. Perhaps certain flights are sold out on select days, but it's very far from reality that every scheduled flight is sold out.
A330 will only this summer start to be used to capacity with the Sunday rotations to BCN. Previously this wasn't the case.
A330 is also being used on Zurich flights.
What he meant was outbound charter demand.
Turkish carriers were for years violating the air agreement. PC should technically not be flying to Serbia under that agreement, yet it does. TK was operating more flights to Serbia than allowed under the agreement. JU was therefore tolerated to have a monopoly on the charter flights, as evident every single year when the 2 countries would have a spat over them. JU being kicked out of Ataturk to SAW had no justification, which is why that decision was quickly changed when the Serbian Government reacted.
As JU was moving into IST, they still insisted on blocking TK's expansion to BEG. What Turkish Airlines did was to remind them of what could be at risk for them. Turkey can live without Serbian tourists on the coast but can JU survive without these lucrative charter flights? I don't think so.
So in the end TK got its third daily, its widebodies last year and more importantly they got to launch ESB flights which were blocked a few times in the past.
There is absolutely no single justifiable reason for Air Serbia to have a dedicated charter brand. There is no problem for Air Serbia to be operating charter flights, problem starts when the charter brand is operating Air Serbia's scheduled flights. At JU's size, it's more trouble with 0 benefit.
@09,17
Aviolet never operated charters from KVO as B733's cannot operate at the airport. Air Serbia operated seasonal scheduled flights to SKG, this summer to TIV. Not the same as charters. JU hasn't operated TIV seasonal flights since Montenegro declared independence in 2006. INI charters were operated by Air Serbia. BNX was the only airport that had Aviolet charters. Apparently they tried from OSI and were rejected by the Croatian government.
You are right about failure to attract any winter tourists in Serbia, which is a shame, but you are not right that standard of living didn't improve in Serbia. certainty it is not equal for everyone, but certainly there are more people/families who can affor holidays in more expensive destinations then Sutomore or Pefkohori.
And, I am not SNS member!
Eurowings has become quite active in Belgrade and they do run a large operation at PMI. By launching scheduled flights, JU is leaving a footprint there and consolidating its position. I believe they prevented another Heraklion from happening.
Hopefully they add more flights to BCN in summer as it has become obvious neither Wizz nor Vueling are ready to give up.
Naturally I am referring to Russian tourists who used to come before the war in Ukraine.
Some 5-10 years ago, FZ was there to bring home Serbs from Australia plus some locals who were living and working in the UAE.
It's a shame Etihad fell apart as JU could have profited from this as well.
If it took Belgraders 2-3 hours to the sea, you probably wouldn't see the large amounts of charters and scheduled TIV flights every summer.
ZRH was just one flight.
@16,46
I know what he meant, I wrote about both. Both Bulgaria and especially Romania even have long haul charters, something in BEG we don't have just as yet. They also have scheduled flights out to TFS, a destination that was supposed to happen this winter. This is all outbound tourism.
@17,50
I didn't say it hasn't improved, it hasn't gotten drastically better either as it is made out to be. People leaving Serbia to work abroad has been increasing each year, and expat workers tend to send money home. That amount is between 7-9% of the Serbian GDP, which isn't a small amount. Packages have gotten cheaper, the dinar for the past few years has been stable, inflation is low which is great. I would say that some of the market that used to travel from BUD or TRS is traveling more from BEG as well as competition has made using BEG more attractive.
If Turkey wants to insist on its carriers operating charter flights, they should block JU from operating them until Serbia's DCV allows Turkish carriers rights to charter flights. Agencies in that case would route tourists to other destinations. The hundreds of thousands of tourists that visit Turkey each year isn't an insignificant number.
JU and TK have a codeshare agreement, that helped them with getting back that third daily flight, as well as launching ESB-BEG while JU got INI/KVO-IST. Until both sides sign new bilaterals, this is as good as its going to get.
Turkey doesn't insist on their carriers operating charters, they just don't want TK to be handicapped with flights from IST and ESB. What JU was doing was trying to maintain their charter monopoly while becoming aggressive in Istanbul. This is where they crossed the red line with Turkey.
That is when JU and TK realized that they have to cooperate if they both want to grow on the Serbia-Turkey market. As a result, TK finally got ESB flights, TK added their third daily to BEG (approved for one summer season only) and then JU added flights from KVO and INI while keeping their charter monopoly.
https://www.exyuaviation.com/2014/06/air-serbia-returning-to-ataturk.html?m=1
TK1079/1080 were the flight numbers of the additional flights, arrival into BEG at 14:25 and departing BEG at 15:10.
How was JU aggressive compared to TK? TK was operating with close to 4 times the capacity JU was while looking for more. Put in numbers, TK alone was operating 884 flights a year in each direction with larger capacity, PC and additional 208 flights for a total of 1.092 flights in each direction, thats without their additional charters. JU on the other hand had 260 flights in each direction. Turkish carriers were operating 832 more flights than JU. JU certainly wasn't operating 832 charter flights to Turkey.
JU only increased IST from 5 pw to daily in 2014, and only after TK pulled the additional 3 flights pw, not even replacing the TK capacity. JU hasn't operated more than daily on BEG-IST. In fact, it pulled out of the route for a couple of years and KK jumped in with a JU codeshare, operating up to 10 pw. JU only returned to IST when KK went bankrupt.
JU didn't have a complete monopoly on Turkish charters back then because airlines such as Freebird and TK were operating charters as well to BEG, however not to the amount JU was. Even with a JU monopoly on Turkish charters, Turkish carriers still have the advantage on capacity between Serbia and Turkey, while bilaterals call for reciprocity. Serbia's DCV in fact here is being flexible.