Air Serbia is among the world’s largest customers of Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance (ACMI) leasing, according to a report compiled by ch-aviation. Last month, the Serbian carrier was the fourteenth largest utilisers of ACMI leasing in the world based on the number of flights performed by contracted airlines on its behalf. A total of 911 flights were maintained for Air Serbia by foreign carriers. Romania’s Dan Air operated the largest number of those services, a total of 346. The world’s largest ACMI customer was SAS Scandinavian Airlines, followed by Swiss, Eurowings, European Air Transport Leipzig, Qantas, TUI Airways, Turkish Airlines, Flynas, Jet2, Condor, Smartwings, Virgin Australia and airBaltic. Air Serbia was proceeded by Saudia, Marabu, TAP Portugal, ITA Airways, KLM and Tunisair.
Air Serbia previously said it is using wet-leases to add capacity over the seasonal summer peak, as well as cover the period before securing dry-leases under favourable terms. A wet-lease is a leasing arrangement whereby the lessor provides an aircraft, complete crew, maintenance and insurance to another airline. The Serbian carrier currently has nine aircraft on wet-lease, including two Boeing 737-800s from Lithuania’s KlasJet, two Airbus A320s and one A319 from Romania’s Dan Air, one A320 from Germany’s LEAV Aviation, one ATR72-500 from Danish Air Transport, one Dash 8 turboprop from Germany’s Avanti Air and one Embraer E190 from Greece’s Marathon Airlines. A further two Embraers operated by Marathon Airlines will enter the fleet this summer, the first of which is a former Azul Airlines E195 set to arrive around July 20. A second is expected in September, pending negotiations between the Greek carrier and potential sellers.
Commencing late last year on the increasing number of wet-leases in the carrier’s fleet, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “Currently, we are looking into the longer-term strategy because leisure demand is from mid-June until mid-September, and whatever calculation you do, a dry-lease option with the additional crew for three months of operations, that mathematics doesn't work. We are looking either to make some capacity provider agreement on a long-term basis, five-plus years or trying to enter into some Joint Venture agreements with reverse-seasonality operators. We would like to have a constantly available shortlist of aircraft with pre-negotiated commercial terms and technical reviews to be able to act promptly”. Commenting on the potential order of new aircraft, Mr Marek added, “We have to reach a fleet size of between thirty and 35 aircraft to consider such options”.
Good to know when the next Embraer is arriving. Pity the third won't be for a while.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see it in full JU color scheme.
DeleteI found interesting in yesterday's trip report it was mentioned that one of the cabin crew was Serbian. Was this an Air Serbia cabin crew member or a Serbian crew member working for Marathon Airlines?
DeleteMarathon is employing heavily in Belgrade atm, so it could be that some of ex air serbia staff moved to them
DeleteMarathon hired Serbian speaking crew. Actually from what I've seen one cabin crew and one pilot used to work for Montenegro Airlines/Air Montenegro.
DeleteI guess they are moving to Marathon to work for JU. This could be a potential long-term problem for Air Montenegro.
Anon 09.24
DeleteIt's mostly from carriers that operate Embraers like Air Montenegro since they have the type rating, JU crew doesn't.
Thanks for the info. My guess was that they might be from Montenegro.
DeleteI think for many from Montenegro this is the perfect opportunity to move to a more secure and safe work environment.
DeleteOne thing which is missing from this table is the share of ACMI flights as % of total number of flights. My gut feeling is that Air Serbia would rank quite high on that list.
ReplyDeleteDo a deal with Canadian carriers. They are desparate with winter capacity while in the summer they can offload their excess fleet here in Serbia when we needed the most. Win win for everyone if you ask me!
ReplyDeleteTransat is common type but Sunwing (being scooped up by WJ soon) is antother choice.
You are making 0 sense . Canadian airlines are huge mess and most expensive fleet in airline industry. Plus it is one of the most corrupted market due to horrible gouvermant and lame transport Canada policy.
DeleteMost Expensive fleet? Can you define that please?
DeleteI think the reason why SAS is so high up is that they have an exclusive ACMI operator for their regional flights.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. SAS uses Xfly and CityJet for all ATR and CRJ flights as part of long-term agreements (just like the US carriers wetlease regional flying because of labour agreements).
DeleteThis summer, they also wetlease larger aircraft since they weren't able to grow quickly enough themselves, but the regional wetleases will always make SAS come up high on charts like this.
Nordica is also flying exclusively for them with the crj fleet.
DeleteRecently i think they got 3 A320 NEOs for Malibu airline which is so random haha
It's Marabu Airlines and they operate 5 A320 neos as well as 2 A321 CEOs
DeleteThe decision to go for NEOs with airline so new and focused only on summer charters is a bit odd i must admit
SAS is wet leasing a lot of Smartlynx planes this summer.
DeleteIndeed, SAS uses Smartlynx, Air Baltic and Jettime this summer for additional narrowbodies and HiFly for a single widebody.
Delete"We are looking either to make some capacity provider agreement on a long-term basis, five-plus years or trying to enter into some Joint Venture agreements with reverse-seasonality operators."
ReplyDeleteTo me it seems that Marathon Airlines might be the first one to do this with Air Serbia.
Dan Air a319 is still flying for them as well right?
ReplyDeleteYes unfortunately.
DeleteYes. Flying to Berlin, Bucharest and Stuttgart today.
DeleteDan Air has 2 planes on the weekdays and 3 on the weekends when the A320 arrives.
DeleteLast night Avanti Q400 arrived and it was supposed to fly to Prague but it broke down so A319 flew.
Is the dan air a319 really in that bad of a shape? People constantly complain about that one in particular
DeleteNo, their A319 has an almost identical cabin to JU.
DeleteTheir deal with Dan Air seems to be quite successful
DeleteI am tall and I feel the difference in seat size / pitch between JU and Dan Air.
DeleteSeat pitch and the seat design is literally the same, they have the same seats and the same cabin configuration.
DeleteMy mum flew with YR-URS from Stuttgart to Belgrade, and she said the crew and pilots were Serbian. She did say other Air Serbia planes seemed to have a nicer interior. But all in all, she was satisfied.
DeleteI believe YR-URS is now a dry lease which is why crew was Serbian.
DeleteYR-URS is not on dry lease, it's wet lease. Dan Air has a few Serbian nationals working for them operating on foreign licenses.
DeleteExactly Dan Air has Serbian crew, some of them switched from JU because of better pay and better work conditions.
DeleteΟuch!
ReplyDeleteOuch for SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Swiss, Eurowings, European Air Transport Leipzig, Qantas, TUI Airways, Turkish Airlines, Flynas, Jet2, Condor, Smartwings, Virgin Australia and airBaltic too.
DeleteAll of these airlines are way bigger than JU.
DeleteJU being among them is a great achievement!
JU having 3 long haul destinations, 80 destinations in total, over 2 million passengers handled in H1, the highest average cabin load factor in the region and the highest revenue and profit margin in ex-Yu is a great achievement!
DeleteAn awesome achievement for such a small country and an airline thar was under massive sanctions not that long ago. Serbian gouvermant did the right thing to invest in JU, it is paying off big time.
DeleteBravo Serbian gouvermant
DeleteNo news about famous email
DeleteI am surprised that YU-ASB since in service didn't really contribute much to the improvement of regional routes in terms of cutting down the delays and in terms of releasing the wet leased Dash8?
ReplyDeleteIt was introduced like two days ago..
DeleteAnd one of their ATR broke down in Athens, so quite a tricky situation for them.
That's because JU planned on having 2 Romanian ATRs which never happened. One was replaced by DAT but the other one......
DeleteIt's a shame that they moved away from - 200s and - 500s just to wet lease - 500again
DeleteThe DAT plane is only temporary. Air Serbia's seventh ATR72-600 arrives next month.
DeleteAt least they have where to deploy planes.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if one day Air Serbia has enough of its own aircraft to serve its network.
DeleteNice, but not necessary. What is necessary is to a) continue growing, and b) remain profitable. If those conditions are satisfied, vozi Miško.
DeleteMore and more airlines seem to be doing this. I notice Air Baltic is leasing A320s, A319s, ancient F100...
ReplyDeleteYes, because they have leased out 8 A220s to Swiss. For sure it's worth it for them.
DeletePlus BT is experiencing massive problems with their A220 engines. Poor things.
DeleteSo they lease out their own new planes and subject their passengers to flying crappy F100s. Wow.
DeleteDid they ever find that ACMI expert they had a job vacancy for?
ReplyDeleteNo, there were no takers. That post was handed over to the fleet planning department at JU.
DeleteBased on the chart, it seems that the experts work for SAS and Swiss, and Air Serbia probably needs to pay a high salary to attract someone from them. 😂
DeleteThought so. Thanks for letting us know
DeleteThe idea of having an exclusive capacity provider is a good one. Don't see it happening though.
ReplyDeleteI would like Air Serbia to own at least few planes.
ReplyDeleteLeasing is just fine.
DeleteI wouldn't say so since they obviously can't find planes to lease which is why they are wet leasing in such large numbers.
DeleteThey are wet-leasing because they don't need that kind of capacity in the winter. It's that simple.
Delete"I would like Air Serbia to own at least few planes."
DeleteIs there a really good reason?
Buying factory fresh aircraft is very expensive and JU doesn't have the money to buy new aircraft. Leasing will do just fine until finances stabilise enough for them to afford new planes. Buying in bulk helps to get better discounts which is very important.
DeleteI'm just afraid with Marathon that when (or if) one of the 3 e-90/5 has to go into maintaining or breaks down they don't have a spare aircraft to replace the one who's not operational. In USA most of the big airlines are working with the same model, but because scale is much much larger the maintenance is already part of the plan, whereas with ASL it seems like they are forgetting about that
ReplyDeletethat’s not something to be proud of
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteI don't see anyone suggesting it is something to be proud of. But as you can see, it is quite common.
DeleteNeither to be ashamed of!
DeleteHow many of Air Serbia's own fleet is currently out of service? I think almost all planes are flying,
ReplyDeleteAll are flying except 1 A319, YU-APC. Not sure what is happening with it, it's last flight was on Friday.
DeleteThe huge number of wet leases are getting annoying. You never know what you will get and it's like a lottery.
ReplyDeleteIs it annoying? It's not like regular Air Serbia A319/320 are equipped wih seatback IFE, free WiFi, different business class seats, lounges, showers etc.. you are not missing any of that if the flight if operated by a wet leased plane.
DeleteSwiss is high up because of Helvetic, among other things.
ReplyDeleteAnd Air Baltic... I've booked about 15 flights with LX over the past 4 months and out of those only once I've flown with their aircraft
DeleteTrue. I think they constantly deploy it on one of their daily Belgrade flights for almost a year now.
DeleteZRH-BEG is almost exclusively a mix of Helvetic and Air Baltic wetleases.
DeleteThese days LX is sending more and more A320s. This winter they are increasing capacity with A321neo scheduled to operate up to 4 out of 16 weekly flights.
DeleteWhy constant wet leases?
ReplyDeleteBecause they don't need all the extra planes in winter.
DeleteFrom my memory, they also had wet leases last winter.
DeleteDan Air A319 has been with JU since last spring. It was supposed to leave the fleet so they removed the billboard titles but then they extended the lease.
DeleteIts a mix of not needing the extra capacity out of the peak summer months (June-September) as well as JU not being able to secure additional dry leases, that is either not being able to find adequate aircraft on the market or having the crew capacity to dry lease. Alot of aircraft deliveries have also been delayed due to issues with spare parts availability, which also plays a big factor (as seen with the late arrival of YU-ASB). JU have also had issues with Jat Tehnika not bring able to service their aircraft in a timely manner, which has forced them to send aircraft abroad notably Turkish Technic in Istanbul.
DeleteThat's a lot.
ReplyDeleteI think the situation with wet leases will reduced next year. From what I see, JU is pushing for the Turkish MRO in Belgrade and they are also the ones pushing the government for new handler in BEG.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how either are related to wet leasing.
DeleteHow many wet leases did they have last summer?
ReplyDeleteThey had 4.
Delete1 B737-300
Delete1 B737-400
1 B737-700
1 A319
Thanks
DeleteScary how much money they burned
ReplyDeleteNot really based on their profits so far this year.
DeleteHow much money they burnt, tell us?!
DeleteThey spend money to earn money, that's the basic low on economy!
It is in line with the seasonality of their network.
ReplyDeletethere is only one way of improving it: attracting more investments to Serbia so business travel demand rises.
DeleteToo much wet leasing
ReplyDeleteNormal practice, during the winter the demand falls drastically.
ReplyDelete30% of the fleet is wet leased. Crazy.
ReplyDeleteSerbs love beach holidays.
DeleteSo Air Serbia with the wet leases is now operating a fleet of over 30 planes. 31 if my calculation is correct.
ReplyDeleteNo, 34 aircraft, 9 wet leased.
DeleteA319: YU-APA, YU-APB, YU-APC, YU-APD, YU-APE, YU-APF, YU-APK, YU-APL, YU-APM, YU-APN, YR-URS
DeleteA320: YU-APH, YU-APO, YU-APS, YR-JUL, D-ANDI
A330: YU-ARB, YU-ARC
ATR72: YU-ALW, YU-ALX, YU-ALY, YU-ALZ, YU-ASA, YU-ASB, SE-MDC
Q400: D-AASH
B738: LY-BUS, LY-PMI
E190: SX-PTM
That is 29 aircrafts today. It was 30 yesterday, but YR-DSE left last night.
Hope they got those A321s like they planned.
ReplyDeleteStill parked in Ljubljana, although one was worked on last week
DeleteIt’s easy to run the business so inefficiently when you have few millions of tax payers filling the gaps for years. If you look at the list of companies involved, they are all far bigger than JU, even 10 times, which means that proportionaly JU is by far no. 1 wet lease user in the world. I would expect some responsibility to be taken for this irrational business practice. Nevertheless, I understand that lot of people will be happy with Sinisa’s fixed financial reports stating some wonderland profit figures at the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteYou know the best
DeleteHow on Earth do you know they do not make profit?
DeleteThey never had so many passengers, they never had so many planes, they have 3 profitable long haul destinations, they have many charters and it is logical they have money for so many wet leased airplanes.
Is it really possible that someone thinks that JU would introduce new destinations and make loss on them by paying wet leased planes? Of course not.
You can look in from another direction - they never had so many delays and cancellations. Each delay over 3h cost them potentially 250 eur per passenger - in total, millions of EUR of losses potentially. They massively use wet leased planes which is very costly, much of them wet leased in the middle of season, under huge pressure, which means it costs even more. They are not able to procure maintenance in Jat tehnika so they use far more expensive Turkish technik, along with very expensive ferry (empty) flights to Istanbul. They are hiring staff, including pilots in the last moment, even foreigners, paying EU market prices. They have huge acumulated debts based on a number of loans that allowed them to operate for the past ten years. And if you belive that just introduced flight to Chicago can be profitable in two weeks, than you hardly understand anything about aviation business. They also introduced so many routes which is great and the tickets are not expensive which results in great loads but not in profits. As the writer of the article explained, he bought a ticket for 180 eur instead of 300 or so with Lufthansa - do you understand the meaning of this?
DeleteFares are actually very expensive on JU.
DeleteI try to look in all directions and ot only in these you wish to look at.
DeleteI agree that they never had so many delays and cancellations and it is quite logical as they never had so many destinations and frequencies.
Airport Belgrade is mainly responsible for most of their delays especially in last 1-2 weeks when JU's fleet is consisted of more than 30 airplanes.
Honestly speaking after reading your sentence about "Air Serbia not being able to procure maintenance in Jat Tehnika" I wondered if there is any point to continue regarding your post. Jat Tehnika is a company that made huge problems to Air Serbia especially when they showed their "professionalism" by keeping YU-APB for 5 long months and YU-APA just a bit shorter. I would really like to know how you would react if someone kept your working equipment so long not giving you any possibility to use it for your core business. Would it be your or his fault?
After all, we see here silly statement that it is actually Air Serbia's fault for Jat Tehnika not to being able to complete their obligations on time.
Pilots are usually hired together with wet leased planes so they do not present extra costs.
Let me remind you that except to ORD, Air Serbia is also flying to JFK and TSN where ORD and TSN have become profitable almost from the first flight. I know it does not sound like news that should be mentioned among people who look only to spit on JU, but it is true.
I do understand very well how direct but also how transfer flights work but I did not get impression you understood it too.
The point here is that JU is flying directly BEG-MRS for 180 EUR and with LH writer of the article had to take 2 flights - the most often BEG-MUC and MUC-MRS or BEG-FRA and FRA-MRS. I know also that 2 flights are more expensive than one that justifies this price difference.
Of course some airlines sometimes offer decreased transfer ticket price in order to steal some passengers from foreign market, but often it makes them working with loss. In this particular case LH decided not to do it and they went with commercial price for 2 flights, the same as JU did for direct flight price.
And I will have to disspoint you - the price of 180 EUR does not mean JU does not have yield and that they make loss on that destination only in order to make the planes full. They might not be making huge profit as that price is not high, but we do not know when the passengers purchased the ticket that could justify lower price. Mind you, return ticket for BEG-MRS in 2 weeks time goes to "magical" 290 EUR.
Does it make them suddenly profitable?
@Anon 11:39 "It’s easy to run the business so inefficiently when you have few millions of tax payers filling the gaps for years."
DeleteThis perfectly describes the EU flag carrier in the Ex-Yu region. Makes you wonder why is EC not acting on it?
@anon 14:36 - “ They are not able…” means “nisu u mogucnosti..” - nobody is saying that this is Ju’s fault, but it’s objective situation in which they need to use much more expensive provider and fly empty flights - that ruins their profit. Also, nobody is talking about the pilots under wet lease agreements but about hiring they own pilots - they are desperately looking for pilots. Ten captains left the company 3-4 weeks ago - you can read on the forum about the reason. And if you are really talking about Airport’s responsibility for JU’s delays while at the same time you can check (as anybody else) that Lufthansa and Austrian don’t have similar delays at the same time/morning wave, then it seems that you are not the person that deserve any additional time to be spent debating.
Delete@Anon 14:36 Air Serbia warned back in mid-May that ATC and airport understaffing will be a problem, so Airport knew well in advance but didn't do $*it about it. Warning was issued more than a month before Airport had a meltdown on 18 June. 100% responsible.
DeleteOher airlines have major delays at BEG at different days and different times of day but you don't want to acknowledge it. No worries, here is one from last night, Wizz W9 flight 4001 had 7 hour 23 min depatrure delay to LTN: Sheduled 8:50 PM Departed 4:13 AM. More than SEVEN hours delayed.
You probably meant anon 1602 - 1) nobody is mentioning Wizz, they are total disaster and they experience long delays (as JU) everywhere. 2) Air Serbia never mentioned problems with the airport’s understaffing, before the GOV reps invented that reason. Before that, they just mentioned overally airport’s reconstruction along with lack of planes due to late arrivals and spare parts deficits on the market, as main reasons. 3) air france, klm, lufthansa and austrian don’t have that kind of delays during waves.
DeleteJust as an illustration, even at the time of mild traffic yesterday, between 18 and 19h, JU canceled Ljubljana flight, delayed Hurgada for 1:20h, Venice for 50m, Budapest for 2:45. At the same time, Air Montenegro and Turkish went easily on time. So try to be honest and check the data. Is this Airport’s fault, and if it is, how for the God’s sake?
Air Serbia did mention airport understaffing problems in public more than a month before the big meltodwn. Get informed before posting a comment
DeleteLH and others dont use airports ground services. Thats the difference in delays.
DeleteMarek made an interview in Chicago on May 17 or 18 where he warned about airport understaffing
DeleteAnd even LH1480 has terrible on time record in last 7 days.
DeleteIt is not seen only by people who don't want to see it, but it is also pointless to explain them.
C’mon, JU had 16 delayed departures for 1:30h or more just today, and this is not one of their “colaps” days.
DeleteIt's a big airline with many departures.
DeleteWhilst a portion of this being attributed to seasonality is fair enough and standard practice for many airlines, wetleasing to this extent screams poor planning. The cost of YR-URS vs a dry leased A319 over the period it has been in the fleet cannot make sense. If crew issues are to blame for that example, planning needs to be improved in that department also.
ReplyDeleteWith the A321s and extra AT7s, we now have a situation where they’re arriving at the end of summer. How is seasonality not an issue with these? By Marek’s logic, these plans should be cancelled and left until next summer. He’s saying one thing and doing another to cover up poor planning, it doesn’t make sense.
I believe YR-ARS is no longer a wet lease but a dry lease.
DeleteIn that case it would have had already YU registiation.
DeleteIt takes some time to enter the a/c into the registry.
DeleteYR-URS is not a dry lease. It's not under Serbian registry so JU crew with licenses from the Serbian DCV cannot operate them. It's Dan Air crew with operating on Romanian licences.
DeleteCrew compliment was a big problem up until a couple of months ago. In the mean time, JU have had fairly successful recruitment campaigns so the situation isn't as bad as was the case last summer. Plus more crew are currently in training apparently. A major issue, from my understanding, was a fair amount of experienced crew who have left the company and 0 initiative from the company to motivate them to stay. I don't think next summer there will be as many wet leases as this year. ATR fleet should total 9 or 10 aircraft, so no need for wet leases. My guess is that it'll be 3 or 4 ERJ's on wet lease from Marathon as well as probably 2-3 A320's.
Regarding A321, JU is seeing the demand on a couple of routes for this additional capacity. It was also mentioned that they got a favourable rate for them. Better loads is also why they are pushing to replace the A319's with A320's with the ERJ's to gap the difference between the A320 and ATR. They had as many as 5 wet leases last winter so they need additional aircraft. The fact that additional dry leases will enter the fleet even after the summer season is over isn't dramatic as it will not be the amount wet leased this summer.
Were any photos of e195 in JU livery published? Surely there are some as the plane will be entering service in 10 days.
ReplyDeleteDoes Air Serbia hire from the Yugo region? If not they should immediately start. And if necessary provide some housing or uni dorms. JU desperately needs more crew and they can't seem to find enough in Serbia.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you got the idea that they have an issue hiring or finding crew. Over 800 applied for their last call.
DeleteThey lack domestic pilots, not other members of the crew or staff.
DeleteCabin crew must be Serbian nationals, pilots don't have to be.
DeleteThey hired 800 new candidates but many older and experienced crew left the airline as they were not happy with the way they were treated.
DeleteCebu Pacific Air world fit prefect for Air Serbia seasonality wise. 6 to 10 Airbuses a321neo and 4 to 6 atr's 72-600. Three months done by Filipinos and then back to paradise!
ReplyDeleteIm flying Cebu soon. Lets see what the service is like :D
Deletelet us know.
Delete