NEWS FLASH
Air Serbia has discontinued ticket sales for its seasonal service between Belgrade and Ankara. The route had been scheduled to resume on April 4 with one weekly flight, increasing to two weekly rotations in May, however, flights are no longer available for booking. It comes after the year-round route was initially downgraded to seasonal and its resumption date pushed back.
The carrier faced competition from AJet on the route, which will continue to operate four weekly services between the two capitals. Air Serbia will maintain its existing scheduled operations to Istanbul and Izmir in Turkey.

It's going to be an interesting summer. We are just days before summer season and airlines are still changing their schedules on a day by day basis.
ReplyDeleteI used to live in Ankara, and VF was the more logical decision, I know the night time schedule was made for transfer passenger, but with a TK flight to Istanbul every hour and PC and VF having strong transfer networks of their own, JU rarely made sense on the market, I feel like they could be more successful if they flew during their midday wave, though they would need capacity for that
ReplyDeleteWhat was preventing JU to reschedule BEG-ESB flights. Let's say depart from BEG at 12:00 and return to BEG at 16:30? It can also catch most of the connections on both ends.
Delete4h 10 min block time (for both trips) plus 45 turn around time will not allow for such a schedule. Plus when factoring in the minimum transit time of 35 mins a hypothetical midday ESB rotation becomes useless as it misses a majority of worthy connections.
DeleteAnother political destinstion canceled. Makes sense
ReplyDeleteGood decision. Better use capacity on other route without so strong competition. Maybe other Turkey large city or Yerevan maybe
DeletePray do elaborate why this was a "political destination". Facts only, please.
DeleteThey announced launching of Ankara after meetings between Serbian and Turkish politicians.
Deleteof course the guy above is talking absolute nonsense. The route was announced when the renegotiated Serbia-Turkey bilateral was finally adopted by Turkey after many years. TK and JU had to negotiate and approve the routes, which is why both airlines started Ankara and both started Izmir. Bilateral is still very restrictive. Dropping Ankara allows JU to actually launch something else in Tukey. We will see. Some people here have too much time and make things up as they go.
DeleteWhats this obsession with Yerevan?
DeleteReally what's the obsession with one of the busiest unserved destinations out of BEG, what could it be?
DeleteIt’s not obsession, but need for transfer routes feeding
DeleteExpected. Turkish citizens prefer home companies with Turkish spoken crew. JU is successful only on summer charters with Serbian tourists
ReplyDeleteThe 2020 bilateral between Turkey and Serbia was a huge win for Turkish carriers.
DeleteTheir share of the traffic between our traffic has been increasing every year at the expense of JU.
Not at all since Air Serbia's traffic share until then was 0%. Think more before making things up.
DeleteYou can not compete when traffic is most of the year unidirectional, from Turkey towards Serbia. In the summer JU is dominating in charters, which is actually win for JU. Imagine if Turkish carriers use their capacity to transfer Serbian tourists to Turkey. They would have both directions covered
DeleteExpecting Izmir cancellation also
ReplyDeleteOverall JU is slowly but surely retreating from Turkey, Ankara cancelled, IST less flights than a year ago...
ReplyDeleteIST has a grand total of 1 flight less per week than last year.
DeleteI always love reading these comments here. So dramatic.
DeleteIt used to have 21 weekly flights not so long ago
DeleteIt was the case 3 years ago when the world was still impacted by covid and there were limited options for travel. 7 years ago JU had 0 flights to Turkry.
DeleteTouché
DeleteSo why didn't TK reduce BEG?
DeleteTK did reduce. Throughout last summer it operated fewer flights than planned to BEG and it was reported here too.
DeleteThey should launch Batumi instead.
ReplyDelete