Air Serbia is approaching its ninth year of operations to the United States as it considers adding its third destination in the country. Data accumulated by provider OAG for 2024 indicates the carrier continues to have more point-to-point passengers between Serbia and the United States on its two routes to New York and Chicago than transfers. However, there is a sizeable amount of transfer traffic as well, with services to and from New York having a significantly larger share of connecting passengers compared to Chicago. Podgorica to/from New York remains the busiest citypair for the airline among transfers, followed by New York – Istanbul, Skopje, Moscow, Tivat, Tirana and Athens. Tirana remains one of the busiest unserved routes from New York JFK, while both Istanbul and Athens boast numerous nonstop flights to the Big Apple.
Air Serbia was the sixth largest airline between Russia and the US last year, behind Turkish Airlines, which dominates the market, then Qatar Airways, Emirates, Royal Air Maroc and Uzbekistan Airways. The Serbian carrier was followed by Etihad Airways and Egypt Air. Other destinations in Air Serbia’s network with solid transfer traffic bound or originating the US include Thessaloniki, Zagreb and Ljubljana. On the other hand, passengers flying with Air Serbia and continuing their journey via its codeshare partner JetBlue or its interline partner American Airlines connected the most through New York and Chicago to/from Cleveland, booking data shows.
Tour operators catering for diaspora traffic in the US have indicated that New York remains more popular with Air Serbia’s transfer passengers as the average fares are cheaper than from Chicago. They also noted that Sarajevo has potential as a connecting destination via Belgrade to/from the US, however, the lack of suitable connections in either direction keeps demand low.
Based on indirect traffic flow, the busiest unserved route from Belgrade in the United States remains Los Angeles, followed by Miami, Washington and Boston. Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines and KLM are most commonly used by passengers from/to Belgrade to reach unserved destinations in the US, although Air Serbia carries a large share of these passengers too. Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, previously noted, “Following China, we will continue to grow on the American market. We are considering Toronto and Miami, which we mentioned a number of times. After that we hope there will be enough destinations in North America in the years to come”.
