Air Serbia welcomed over 750.000 passengers on board its aircraft during the first quarter of 2024, marking its strongest start to the year since rebranding in 2013. The airline handled well over 200.000 passengers for each of the three months and is expected to soon carry its millionth passenger of the year. In March alone it welcomed 271.102 travellers onboard its aircraft, up 15% on the same month in 2023. Its most popular destinations were Zurich, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Milan, and Vienna in Western Europe, while Podgorica, Tivat, and Ljubljana, took top spot regionally. In the broader Euro-Mediterranean region, the most sought-after flights were to Athens, Barcelona, and Istanbul.
Commenting on the result, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “The first quarter of 2024 was successful for Air Serbia. During the first three months, we carried over 750.000 passengers, which is 110.000 more passengers year-over-year. Additionally, we operated 16% more flights compared to the number of flights in the first three months of 2023. We expect to soon carry our one-millionth passenger in 2024. For comparison, in 2023, this number of passengers was reached only later in the year, on May 8”. He added, “The good monthly and quarterly results delight us and motivate us to provide our passengers with even more opportunities and a better customer experience during the summer season, which in aviation began on March 31".
Air Serbia is expected to have a dynamic remainder of the year. It is due to take delivery of three ATR72-600 aircraft and has tentatively scheduled entry into service of Embraer E190 aircraft from mid-April, with E195 jets to follow in June, although the carrier is yet to officially communicate the arrival of the E-jets. Later in the summer, the carrier is due to take delivery of two Airbus A330-200 aircraft, while an important announcement is expected to be made by the company later this month. The Serbian airline anticipates breaking JAT Yugoslav Airlines’ annual passenger record set in 1987, when it handled 4.531.000 travellers, either this year or in 2025.
Bravo Air Serbia 🇷🇸🇷🇸🇷🇸
ReplyDeleteThis is great news. Just hope they resolve the plane challenges.
DeleteHow much market share does JU have in Belgrade
ReplyDelete~45%
DeleteSomething over 50%, iirc
DeleteWe can guess when BEG's March numbers are out.
Delete1026,well,when the numbers are made public, it won't be guessing, right?
DeleteWeren't people saying no one would fly with them after the Marathon incident?
ReplyDeleteNobody said that
DeleteOh yes they did. Especially certain analytical experts
DeleteOver here no one said that. Quite the contrary, most people said they should have weathered the storm and kept the contract in place.
DeleteWould be interesting to see if they had a post accident dip in percentage (not overall passengers) in March compared to January /Feb.
Delete^ it would be difficult to make the connection because they reduced their growth rate from mid-February after they no longer had Embraer planes.
DeleteWhat matters is that their passenger numbers grew faster than capacity. It means their planes had better LF.
DeleteI wish they would work actively on adding more dry lease A320s.
+1
DeleteHow many A320s do they have now? 2?
Delete3 A320 now
DeleteThat's way too little.
Delete@ 9:15
DeleteI’m still happy they didn’t though. I trust Air Serbia, and have flown on it several times, but I wouldn’t on Marathon Airlines.
3 dry leased and 2 wet leased, so 5 flying now. There were articles here that Getjet will provide 4 A320s for this summer, so they might have 7 for the summer season.
DeleteOnly 4 now. LY-WIL no longer flies for JU
DeleteLY-WIZ, LY-MAL and LY-GYM are A320s from GetJet flying for JU these days. The fourth one, LY-NOW, will join them in couple days.
DeleteFrom next week JU will have 7 A320s in their fleet, 3 dry-leased and 4 wet-leased from GetJet.
When you look at the number of aicraft that are coming, that's pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteIt should translate to growth
DeleteHmm what could that announcement be
ReplyDeleteMIA
Delete^ Was thinking that too
DeleteMaybe we see a late summer expansion from them.
DeleteNot before winter season
DeleteIt’s Miami flights, starting this winter season
DeleteI think it will be related to long haul expansion.
Deletehttps://www.miamitodaynews.com/2024/04/02/mia-talks-with-air-india-air-serbia-about-air-links/
DeleteMiami daily news from yesterday..
Either Toronto or Lagos
DeleteDo we know what is the number of offered seats and y/y increase in offered seats for Q1?
ReplyDeleteOf course. If you read the text it says they had 16% more flights so they obviously had more capacity.
DeleteMr Smart, increase in flights does not have to be proportionate to increase in seats. You may fly more with planes that are bigger than average in your fleet or smaller than average in your fleet. So with more flights there was most certainly increase in seats offered, but what % remains the question.
DeleteOverall very good result. It helps that the Serbian economy is performing quite well. I read somewhere that February GDP growth was (I think) over 6%. Industrial activity rose by 8.6%.
ReplyDeleteOnce Sava Centar is fully open they will have even more demand. There are already several European congresses which are scheduled to take place this year. I think 4 of them will have over 8.000 participants.
Let's hope their staffing issues are resolved so that they can keep on growing. Good thing is that the government expects them to do so, especially the guys who are watching over them at the Ministry of Finances.
Don't think that I'm trying to argue but I just want to ask, how do so many people from Belgrade travel while people in Zagreb how earn around 350 eur more than the average salaries in Belgrade?
DeleteSerbs in general loves to travel and explore. Even my baba travels and has upgraded her vaccations to greece after many years in montenegro and bulgaria. Next year she plans spain and she lives on a low pension income. But we support ofcourse when needed. Thats my impression of us serbs we reslly do love to travel and explore i would say more than our neighbours, and with higher salaries this will only continue
DeleteI don't know much about Zagreb but when it comes to Belgrade, don't forget that the area of Serbia's capital is quite large. So when they calculate the average salary they also have to take into consideration places like Barajevo, Sopot, Grocka, Mladenovac...
DeleteIf you take the more central areas of Belgrade then you get the following result:
Star Grad: €1.472
Vracar: €1.457
Novi Beograd: €1.370
You also have to take into consideration that places such as Novi Sad also fly from BEG.
That is why I think BEG will keep on seeing strong demand especially as the government keeps on investing in congress tourism. Sava Centar is now a private company so they will work hard to achieve profitability.
@09:24 we have the Adriatic sea and half of the people from Zagreb own a house (vikendica) on the Adriatic and spends most of their holiday time there. Also we have a lot of domestic tourism, in most months Croatians are among top 5 or top 10 tourists in Croatia, and since we have cca 20 million tourist arrivals per year that means there are at least hundreds of thousands of Croatian tourists visitng Croatia yearly. I agree that Croatians should travel abroad more though.
DeleteBear in mind that 40% of their pax numbers are connecting passengers.
DeleteBelgrade is also much larger than Zagreb which produces a lot more potential passengers.
DeleteI understand the interest, but the comparison between ZAG and BEG is not appropriate. they are completely different cities that have very different organization and function. an example is over the last 10 years, BEG and JU are developing a Hub and spoke model of air transport, whereas ZAG is point to point meaning that BEG has huge transfer passangers that ZAG doesnt. there are many reasons. but they are just different markets
DeleteHaving many friends from the Balkans, I notice that especially Serbs spend to the last penny. They are crazy about brand names, luxury goods and they will pay for food and drinks for everyone. Croats and Slovenians are more value-oriented customers and more careful how they spend their money. They are all great people to be around and I am so happy to the economy in the whole region is doing better, so more people can afford vacations and travel to other places.
DeleteAnonymous09:34 This is so cute, and true. My baba is saving up for another Turkey trip (and has about 320e pension) so yes, Serbs spend a lot on travel and it became a social norm.
Delete21:49, haha love it. Maybe in a couple of years they will meet up at the amalfi coast or lake como haha lol. I’ll never forget the 13h+ train trips to bar with hleb i prsuta with my baba and siblings. We’ve come a long way and we always find a way for vaccations regardless of our pockets. Cheers
DeleteAnon 11:38
DeleteConnecting passengers make up 40% of JU's passengers, not BEG's. Since Air Serbia has roughly 50% marketshare it means transfers account for roughly 20% of all passengers.
12.01
DeleteSize doesn't say much as demand can be created. Look at Reykjavik which is home to some 122.000 people yet KEF handled 7.7 million passengers last year. Out of these 7.7 million, 2.2 were tourists that arrived by air. Not bad for a country that is home to 382.000 people.
Slav.Man
DeleteAs pointed out above, roughly 20% of BEG traffic are transfers which comes out to be 1.589.640 passengers. If we exclude these then BEG had 6.358.562 passengers which is not bad. This is the O&D demand last year.
As pointed out some days ago, JU and others serving BEG are lucky that the economy (especially in Belgrade, western Serbia and Backa) does well. In 2023 GDP grew by 2.5% while in Q4 this growth amounted to 3.8%.
This will further fuel demand for air travel. The fact that in March JU had 15% more passengers with 8% more flights only goes to show that demand grew faster than supply. I sincerely hope JU will find a way to cope with this growth otherwise their competition might profit.
When is the first Embraer plane scheduled to start flying for JU?
ReplyDelete15 April
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2024/03/air-serbia-schedules-embraer-aircraft.html
I notice all OMO flights are now on the E190 again, except for inaugural.
DeleteSurprisingly high growth
ReplyDeleteWhy surprisingly? JU has so many new destinations and flights compared to last Q1. The real test will be if they can sustain the growth from April onwards.
DeleteThey still have more flights this summer than last summer. 2-3% more.
DeleteIts an active airline with a growth based strategy unlike OU which is a very passive airline. OU could have had and still could become a growth focused airline too but for whatever reason they choose not to be.
DeleteAir Serbia will continue to look for ways to add passengers so if they do stagnate, unless they are hit with outside of their control global events l, think any stagnation would only be temporary.
Because you don't just wake up one day and decide to have a growth based strategy. You need to know what you want and how to get it.
DeleteOU and the Croatian government never cared enough about developing the aviation sector and we can see this from the extremely weak offer in winter months. Western tour operators will take care of the market when summer comes but it's up to Croatia to come up with ideas on how to attract tourists during the slower months. Given Split's and Dubrovnik's numbers outside the summer months we can see that not much was done to change this.
Serbia invested millions into JU and despite their many flaws we can see now that their investment has more than paid off.
And people were predicting absolute gloom.
ReplyDeleteNo, people said they were unrealistic in their planning. And they were proven correct.
DeleteLet's wait and see shall we.
DeleteNice!
ReplyDeleteGood start to the year
ReplyDeleteSo what can we conclude about BEG's growth for March?
ReplyDeleteFrom these JU numbers i mean
DeleteI think BEG had 470.000 last year so it should be over or close to 500.000. Depends what wizz and other do.
DeleteThanks
DeleteGreat news. I think they can definitely break JAT's passenger record this year.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the load factor?
ReplyDeleteAnd also what was the financial performance.
DeleteThey release annual financial performance, and in recent years half yearly financial performance.
DeleteWell done.
ReplyDeleteConsidering how much disruption there was in January with strikes at European airports, weather in BEG and the afternoon when all flights were delayed and some cancelled because of BEG's mistake, then the Marathon accident, this is very good.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteThe difference with Q1 2019 is even bigger.
ReplyDeleteCan JU reach 5 million passengers this year?
ReplyDeleteNo chance this year
DeleteWe will see if they can keep up this growth in Q2
ReplyDeleteThey will. Not as big, but there will be growth.
DeleteAir Serbia currently has a really good promotional fares they launched yesterday. That should help further lift numbers.
ReplyDeleteTypical marketing trick, advertising a flight to Lisbon for 5400rsd one way light but when you make the reservation for two people it turns out that you get charged 67310RSD (return with luggage).
DeleteThat's still peanuts compared to other airlines.
Delete300 euros return flight with luggage on a route that takes 3 hours of flying is not that much.
DeleteDid anyone noticed that JU changed their flight numbers?
ReplyDeleteWasn't there an article about that?
Yes there was. It was also mentioned in the article about Air Serbia's summer frequencies a few days ago.
DeleteI don't remember any such article.
DeleteWhy not just search it?
Deletehttps://www.exyuaviation.com/2023/11/air-serbia-to-renumber-flights.html
Why did they change them though, although I like that they restored the same flight numbers JAT had.
DeleteI really hope that E190 is dry-leased instead of wet-leased like many people say it will be.
ReplyDeleteOn their website it says "operated by Air Serbia". So it doesn't seem to be a wet-lease.
DeleteWho said it would be wet-leased? Everyone is saying the opposite, all new Embraers will be dry-leased.
DeleteMany mentioned 1 E190 is being wet lease from Bulgaria Air.
DeleteI guess we just have to wait and see. Many people said it will be LZ-SOF from Bulgaria air, but then on the website it says operated by Air Serbia.
DeleteI don’t think they would dry lease E190. It’s short term solution until they find more E195s
DeleteWell on Air Serbia’s website it says operated by Air Serbia, so shouldn’t it be dry-leased?
DeleteYes, based on what they wrote on their website
DeleteThen why we cannot see Embraers on Planespotters, and 3 ATRs (soon to come) and even 2 A330-200 (to come in few months) are listed there?
ReplyDeleteExactly what I was thinking, they should be on there.
DeleteIt can be edited by anyone. The 3 ATRs and the A330s that are coming are already known registration wise.
DeleteCongratulations. I'm guessing that will be 4.3 million by the end of the year?
ReplyDeleteHow many passengers did they have last year?
Delete4.19 million
DeleteThey will more likely handle 4.4 million or 4.5. It will be very close to 1987 record, either just above or just below.
DeleteWould be interesting to see how many passengers by each route.
ReplyDeleteYou won't see any airline sharing that sort of information.
DeleteWell it says which destinations are the most popular in their network.
Delete