Plans to introduce flights between Belgrade and Tashkent are advancing, with services expected to launch in the coming period, the Uzbek and Serbian foreign ministries said yesterday. Following a period of deliberation, the two sides confirmed that operations between the capitals would be introduced, although they did not identify the airline involved. They noted that the new route would strengthen economic cooperation, tourism and people-to-people ties. Last October, Serbia’s President said Air Serbia was examining the possibility of launching flights to either Tashkent or Samarkand, with the final destination to be selected following a commercial and economic assessment. Discussions advanced in February, when an Uzbek delegation met Air Serbia’s CEO Jiri Marek and Serbia’s Minister for Construction, Transport and Infrastructure in Belgrade to explore the introduction of flights and potential cooperation between the two countries’ airlines.
Air Serbia’s CEO recently said the carrier would increasingly focus on Central Asia as part of its future expansion plans. However, Mr Marek noted that destinations in the region formed part of the airline’s five-to-ten-year strategy. “The challenge with these destinations is that they occupy an aircraft for a very long period because of the flight time involved. When you operate routes of that length, you effectively lose the aircraft for the entire day. At the same time, we still see significant opportunities to increase frequencies on shorter routes, where the same aircraft can perform two or even three rotations per day. That is why our current focus remains on maximising the utilisation of our fleet and developing markets where additional frequencies can generate the greatest returns. These destinations will come in time, but at this stage I cannot say exactly when”.
Air Serbia previously said that Central Asian carriers had expressed interest in launching flights to Belgrade following SCAT Airlines’ introduction of services between the Serbian capital and Astana last year. “These discussions usually take time, as you need to convince them and clearly explain the benefits of flying to Belgrade and of using a secondary, niche hub”, Mr Marek said. He added, “With SCAT’s move, you can now see airlines in Central Asia beginning to view Belgrade differently and recognising its potential. For us, any carrier from that region that wants to fly to Belgrade will have our support and full access to our network. These are routes where capacity is already fully utilised on a single daily rotation due to long block times. We have many other markets we would like to open but lack the capacity, so we would prefer someone else to operate them. These markets are predominantly connecting rather than strong point-to-point”. Belgrade was last linked to Uzbekistan by scheduled flights in 2004, when Uzbekistan Airways operated between Tashkent, Belgrade and New York using Boeing 767 aircraft.
