Air Serbia’s ATR 72-600s performThose words were spoken by Jiří Marek, the carrier’s CEO, at Routes Europe in Łódź. Confirming what has already been disclosed, Marek said that Air Serbia would likely add business class to its ATRs to make sure more product uniformity with its Airbus fleet. Two more ATRs are coming, and possibly more after that.
Air Serbia’s ATR 72s
Marek says Air Serbia is a It has five 72-seat ATR 72-600s, leased from AerCap, GOAL, and Nordic Aviation Capital. Aircraft six and 7 are coming; they are going to probably arrive later this yr.
Moreover, it’s leasing an ATR 72-600 from Romania’s AirConnect, for a complete of six. Earlier this yr, Marek said that Air Serbia would have as much as eight ATRs in 2023. Given two incoming aircraft, it appears the AirConnect example will remain for a while.
Photo: AirConnect.
Flightradar24 shows that YR-ACB has operated for Belgrade (BEG)-hubbed Air Serbia since March twentieth, 2023. Nonetheless, YR-ACA was positioned to BEG from Forli on May sixteenth and entered revenue service the next morning. It’s unclear if/when ACB will return to service for Air Serbia.
What Marek said
“We went through an enormous project and completely grounded the ATR 72-200 and -500 [the latter earlier in 2023]. We’ll proceed to grow this regional fleet as it is vital for higher frequencies and improving hub connectivity and ultimately helps to expand long-haul.”
Photo: James Pearson I Easy Flying.
ATR network: June 2023
Cirium data shows Air Serbia plans to make use of ATR 72s on 30 routes in June. They’re from its BEG hub, together with Nis (INI) and Kraljevo (KVO). In June and other than BEG, INI has routes to Athens (ATH) and Ljubljana (LJU), while KVO is linked with Tivat (TIV) and Istanbul (IST).
Click here for KVO-IST flights.
Image: GCMap.
KVO-IST covers 452 miles (727 km) and sometimes takes about two hours. However it just isn’t quite Air Serbia’s longest ATR route: at 462 miles (743 km), BEG-Prague (PRG) is.
Click here for BEG-PRG flights.
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Overnight ATR flights
Air Serbia uses its ATR 72s in a really unusual and different way. To assist increase connectivity over BEG across the Balkans and beyond, it has midnight-plus departures.
Most days, ATR flights leave BEG between 00:20 and 01:10 for Bucharest (OTP), Ohrid (OHD), Skopje (SKP), Sofia (SOF), Thessaloniki (SKG), Tirana (TIA), and Varna (VAR). They then arrive back between 05:15 and 05:45. (It also has non-ATR flights in this era.)
Photo: EvrenKalinbacak I Shutterstock.
The very early arrival times in BEG help explain Air Serbia’s early departures to Chicago (06:50) and JFK (07:50), and likewise across Europe.
Snapshot: overnight flights, June tenth
On this example day, six ATRs (Air Serbia’s five, plus one from AirConnect) will leave BEG as follows inside 10 minutes:
- TIA: leaves BEG at 00:35 (arrives back at 05:30)
- VAR: 00:35 (05:20)
- OTP: 00:40 (05:30)
- SKG: 00:40 (05:15)
- SOF: 00:40 (05:45)
- SKP: 00:45 (05:25)
While it have to be horrendous as a passenger, it is extremely different in Europe and for the ATR and is, on this sense, exciting.
Have you ever flown Air Serbia’s ATRs? In that case, share your experience within the comments.