Air Serbia Returns To Geneva After 36 Years Upgrading From The DC-9

Air Serbia will launch flights from Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport to Geneva on 1st March and increase both the capacity and frequency of its flights to Zurich on 2nd February. When its aircraft lands in Geneva in March, it will not be Air Serbia’s first time. In 1985, when it was still operating under the brand name JAT, the airline used to operate the Ljubljana – Zurich – Geneva – Ljubljana triangle route twice weekly, with its DC-9 aircraft.

Air Serbia twice weekly to Geneva

Starting Monday 1st March, Air Serbia will be flying between Belgrade Nikola Tesla and Geneva twice weekly, on Mondays and Fridays. The launch is not unexpected: Air Serbia had previously planned to start flying to Geneva together with five other destinations as part of its 2020 expansion. But, because of the pandemic, these plans were postponed.

Air Serbia is counting on its power as a transfer airline to fill these flights. This is evident from the way in which the Serbian airline has scheduled the flights: the Belgrade-Geneva-Belgrade rotation will depart early in the morning on Mondays and late in the afternoon on Fridays. On Mondays, flight JU470 will leave Belgrade for Geneva at 07:00 in the morning and return back to Serbia at 11:45 as flight JU471. On Fridays, the rotation starts at 17:40 when the aircraft leaves Belgrade and ends at 22:25 when the aircraft returns.

With this schedule, passengers can conveniently transfer onto Air Serbia’s flights to Athens, Istanbul, Larnaca, Moscow, Podgorica, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Tirana, and Tivat, Air Serbia said.

Zurich receives a boost

At the same time, Air Serbia is boosting the frequency of its flights to Zurich, from five weekly to daily. Furthermore, some rotations will see an upgrade in capacity too from an Airbus A319 to the larger A320 aircraft.

In fact, Zurich has been one of Air Serbia’s best-performing routes lately. Along with New York JFK, it is one of the airline’s markets that have seen more rotations in October 2020 than they had had in October 2019, Air Serbia said. There were as many as four weekly flights on Saturdays and Sundays that Air Serbia operated with its Airbus aircraft on the Belgrade-Zurich route that month.

Air Serbia will compete with easyJet

Air Serbia will compete directly against easyJet when it launches flights to Geneva. easyJet is currently not flying to Belgrade from Geneva because most of its route network is in hibernation mode, but, nevertheless, easyJet too plans to start flying the route in March.

On the route, easyJet runs an evening flight on Fridays and a morning flight on Sundays. Air Serbia will run an evening flight on Fridays too, but its other rotation will be on Monday mornings.

Do you think easyJet will end up exiting the market between Switzerland and Serbia after Air Serbia’s boost to Zurich and a network addition in Geneva? Let us know what you think of this story in the comments below.