NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia has operated an evacuation flight for Serbian nationals amid the escalating crisis in the Middle East. The airline deployed an Airbus A319 aircraft last Friday for a special service between Belgrade and Sharm El Sheikh, located at the southern tip of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The flight was coordinated by the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also arranged ground transport from the Israel - Egypt border to Sharm El Sheikh. This marks the second evacuation mission operated by Air Serbia in recent months, following a similar flight to Beirut in October 2024.
Bravo Air Serbia 🇷🇸🇷🇸🇷🇸
ReplyDeleteBravo Serbia 🇷🇸🇷🇸🇷🇸
I wonder if the evacuees ever get to pay something for these charters?
ReplyDeleteIsrael is in a protracted conflict for quite some time now, and yet someone chooses to stay there and then be granted public money evacuation flight.
On a side note, this shows importance of having a flag carrier, even though here evacuating the easy going citizens...
There are diplomacy personnel, religious representatives, some people studying, having medical procedures etc. It’s not just about tourists…
DeleteSharm El Sheikh is in Egypt, not in Israel.
DeleteAnd JU has been operating charters there for years.
^ Israeli aisrpace is closed. This was not a leisure charter but an evacuation charter. Read the article. The flight was specifically chartered to get people out of Israel. There weren't other people flying for holidays to or from Sharm el Sheikh.
DeleteThere are also a few Serbian Jews with dual citizenship who are heading back to Serbia to escape the conflict.
DeleteThere are already a lot of Israeli families in Belgrade, fleeing war. I expect more coming
DeleteGood trip report. Those passengers seem genuinely happy to be onboard Air Serbia.
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t matter which airline
DeleteExactly, in stark contrast to other trip reports.
DeleteThis is a story of people evacuated from Sarajevo heading to Tel Aviv in April 1992:
DeleteIt is late 1991. The war in former Yugoslavia was already the fact. War in Croatia was in the full swing. in Sarajevo, where I was born and lived at the time, two of my good friends, one who wanted to convert to Judaism, and another one whose paternal grandmother and maternal father were Jews, have decided to continue their studies in Israel, and use the "right to return". After initial period spent in Budapest they were already in Israel as tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina were growing. Aviation was always my passion. In early 1990 I asked a friend who was running a small tourist agency if she wanted to add airline tickets to her agency's offering. She said yes, we agreed on commission share mode, and quickly I started spreading a word of my new side business as I was still studying at the time. Soon, my professors, friends, and family were the first clients. By word of mouth my client base grew and eventually would have the National Theater as the most prominent client. JAT offering from Sarajevo was modest. After loosing Croatian and Slovenian markets in 1991 and the obligation of all male citizens who wanted to travel abroad and flying out of Belgrade had to present a special permit issued by the JNA, two new private airlines appeared in Sarajevo: Air Bosna, established by a former head of Sarajevo JAT office and Air Commerce established by husband of Adria's employee at Sarajevo office. JAT was still paying 10% commission for their international flights issued on the IATA stock and 7% on their domestic stock. The newly establish airlines were offering competitive commissions as well. They organized scheduled charters to Turkey, Germany and Switzerland, connecting them to Skopje and Belgrade. From Belgrade soon started a significant flow of men escaping army obligation and draft, as BEG-SJJ flights were still considered domestic and the border police in Sarajevo was not checking possession of JNA permits to travel. My friend's parents then asked me if I could organize an incentive tour for a group of 10-15 couples, whose children were already in Israel, and who wanted to visit Israel for Pesach which was falling on 17 April in 1992. The trip for itself was rather complicated, as visas were still in place and the Israeli proxy for visas was the Embassy of Belgium in Belgrade. After the visas were granted with a help of Jewish Community in Belgrade, I arranged with the tour with JAT at very attractive rate for the routing SJJ-BEG-TLV and back between 15 and 30 April 1992. The tickets were issued by February I reduced the group's price by deducting my commission and everybody was excited to spend the Pesach (Passover) with their children in Israel that year.
Slobodan Delić
DeleteStill nobody was very concerned that the war would hit Sarajevo. My business was growing, it was visible that all three airlines offering flights out of Sarajevo had full flights and a share of that market was mine. In March 1992 I did a day trip to Belgrade to negotiate a special fare for Air China flight to Beijing as the trips to Chinese capital for shopping were becoming largely popular. I returned to Sarajevo with a deal, yet while at lunch at my grandmother's school friend she and her family were literally begging me to stay as they seriously were concerned that BiH would not be spared by war. I laughed and argued that for us in Sarajevo there was not a slightest possibility to experience a war. Fast forward and the war erupted in Sarajevo between 5 and 6 of April. In the morning of 8 April, I was still sleeping when a door bell woke me up. I heard my mother speaking to another woman. Then she came to my room and said that we should leave by 11 am and that the neighbor whose husband was Jewish informed her that the Jewish Community in Sarajevo was registering their members' intent to leave the city. I managed to go and see my grandmother and get her blessing by stating that "this war is not ours" alleging to her family huge loss in WWII. My grandmother lost in WWII her husband, mother, father, her first daughter and two sisters. That would be the last time I saw her. She would die one day after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed. Flights out of Sarajevo ceased on April the 5th. Once in Belgrade, which I reached by car on April the 8th, I had to quickly see how to grant my clients trip to Israel especially as the flights from Sarajevo were stopped a few days earlier. Luckily at JAT's office in Belgrade I met a few people from their Sarajevo's office who helped me exchange the tickets to BEG-TLV-BEG only. The only air link between Sarajevo and Belgrade was the Boeing 707 earlier confiscated by JNA in Zagreb, a.k.a. "Kikaš". Somehow all of my clients managed to get to Belgrade around April the 10th and were accommodated by the Belgrade Jewish Community at Bristol Hotel. They would all safely reach Tel Aviv, except one who facing the war threats and horrors for yet another time in his life committed sluiced in Belgrade. None of them except the parents of my friend would return from Israel. By end of April I found safety in Greece where I lived ever since. In late December 1992 I rejoined my friend in Vienna, who after passing German-Austrian border with great difficulty with her orange Israeli travel document, joined her parents in Vienna where they settled to continue their life. Her grandmother who was evacuated from Sarajevo earlier in the Summer was with us as well. We met the new 1993 year with comments and lament over own homeland about Czech and Slovak velvet divorce, and lunched around the table while watching the Vienna New Year Concert broadcast from Wiener Musikverein, a habit we had each one with our own families while we lived our happy lives in Sarajevo.
DeleteLet everyone give peace a chance !