Air Serbia will today take delivery of a second Embraer E195 aircraft, as the carrier prepares to launch in-house operations with the Brazilian manufactured plane. The jet, registered OY-GDB prior to entering the Serbian registry, is expected to arrive from Warsaw this afternoon. Air Serbia’s first E195 (OY-GDA) is already in Belgrade, having been grounded since another E-jet, operated by Marathon Airlines on Air Serbia’s behalf, was involved in an incident upon take-off from Belgrade. The Serbian carrier has tentatively scheduled the entry into service of its first 118-seat jet for July 15 between Belgrade and Naples, followed by the Belgrade - Milan service. At this point, the second E195 is slated to enter service on August 1, however, changes remain possible. They are expected to bear the Serbian registration YU-ATA and YU-ATB.
The two E195s are being complemented by two wet-leased Bulgaria Air E190 jets. The airline plans to progressively replace its ten Airbus A319s with the Embraers and anticipates a sizeable fleet of the Brazilian made aircraft. “With the removal of the A319s from the fleet, there will be a gap between the A320 with 180 seats and the ATR72 with 72 seats. The A319 is the ideal match there, but because it is a maturing aircraft, the Embraer is a good choice to cover that gap”, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said recently. Apart from Naples and Milan, the E195s have currently been scheduled to operate flights to Amsterdam, Athens, Frankfurt, Sarajevo, Skopje, Thessaloniki, Rome, Podgorica, Tivat and Zurich.
Air Serbia will operate the E195s with its own crew. Mr Marek recently noted, “We set the target [for the introduction of the Embraer in the fleet] at three months with one month buffer which brings us to the beginning of July. At the moment, it is going according to plan. We have already hired several pilots. We are also working on the introduction of the aircraft into our internal systems, starting from maintenance to flights ops and others. At the moment, we believe that if everything goes according to plan, we will have them in the fleet flying commercial flights in July”.
Comments
"They are expected to bear the Serbian registration YU-ATA and YU-ATB."
is there any relevant info about destiny of OY-GDC? Is it still at BEG airport parked or maybe already scrapped?
I first would love to see JU getting new equipment but let's wait untill they can sustain the purchase financially.
I think they'll grab any A320-321 they can get at a reasonable deal. Until then this birds were in their colors already so why not get them?
They can compliment the fleet with some slimmer routes or ones that are deemed to need higher frequency.
Plus it's more flexible, it has better range, speed and comfort then ATR. But it's also more economical then 320.
At the end of the day only the management knows what's going on and how they plan to develop. We can only guess by what they tell the public and what we find out.
Jesus how I hate seeing that.
On the other hand, everything else is in excellent condition on GDC
Ако старији авиони доносе већу добит, који је разлог да се потроши више и повећа ризик??
So basically what you are saying is that new "wings" should be manufactured separately and brought to Belgrade only to be "replaced". Do you know the amount of man hours needed for this, as well as the fact that it has to be done in the factory? Also, do you know how much it would cost? Moreover, do you know how much hours of just "proving" flights would need to be undertaken in order to get airworthiness certificate?
Engines are the only thing that can be replaced on an aircraft with not such a big problem. Vertical stabilizer (tail) also requires lots of work and a airworthiness certification again.
Structural damage is made however it just shows how good the plane was designed and redundant.