Air Serbia forecast to post €7 million profit in 2022

Air Serbia is expected to post a profit of some seven million euros this year, during which the carrier introduced a dozen new routes, retired its oldest aircraft and took on its second wide-body jet. Although the airline itself has not speculated on its final balance sheet, its main shareholder, the Serbian government, has said the company will come out of two years of Covid-induced losses with a seven-million-euro profit. Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, was more cautious however, telling the Czech “Denik N” newspaper, “We would like to be in the black already this year. Covid taught us to react very quickly, which we can see even in today's circumstances, when fuel prices have skyrocketed. The season was successful, but now we have the harder part of the year ahead of us and no one can predict how inflation will affect people's will to travel, for example. For now, however, we remain optimistic”.

Mr Marek noted the airline has reduced its costs and views airBaltic’s pre-Covid business model as an example. “We look at airBaltic, which was very successful before the pandemic. We cannot become a low cost carrier, that is impossible for an airline of this type. We will never be able to buy a hundred aircraft at once, which is what low cost carriers do to reduce costs. However, we try to be efficient and have twenty to thirty percent lower costs than other legacy carriers”. Mr Marek said. He added, “You have to bring the costs closer to those of low cost carriers but offer passengers better service for which you can charge a fee. We see this, for example, on the route to Paris, where we fly twice a day and Air France only four times per week [seasonally]. We have a codeshare agreement with the French, and we are able to bring passengers to Paris cheaper than them, which is beneficial for everyone”.

Commenting further on its finances, the company’s CEO said, “In no case do we want to rely on the state. Our job is to be profitable and build long-term sustainability. We may be owned by the state, but we really operate as a commercial company”. Mr Marek noted the airline aims to become a leading regional carrier. “We perceive Belgrade as the centre of the region, which is the legacy left from Yugoslavia. The country continues to develop, the GDP is growing, and we are trying to respond to this. At the same time, we try to react to what is happening around us. When the Slovenian Adria went bankrupt in 2019, we immediately increased services to Ljubljana. We were the first to fill that gap. In addition, passengers from neighbouring countries also transfer onto our service to New York. Other than Athens and Istanbul, there is no airline operating wide-body aircraft anywhere in the region. That is also why we are thinking about expanding our services to China. We want to be a regional leader, connect the area well and take advantage of the consolidation that is happening throughout Europe”.