Air Serbia’s origins can be traced back almost a century, with former Yugoslavian flag carrier Aeroput having come into existence in 1927. After the Second World War, the airline was renamed Jat Airways, but this week, it is marking ten years of operations as Air Serbia. With this in mind, let’s check out its fleet.
Small but mighty
According to ch-aviation, the current Air Serbia fleet consists of 35 aircraft with an overall average age of 16.4 years old. Like many European carriers, the Airbus A320 represents its narrowbody family of choice, with two variants present. As pictured below, the most numerous of these is the short-fuselage A319-100.
The carrier has 11 of these twinjets at its disposal, of which one is on a wet lease from Dan Air. Historically speaking, Air Serbia has flown another two units of the Airbus A319-100, and its current examples are 16.8 years old on average. According to aeroLOPA, they have a flexible two-class configuration with 144 seats.
Photo: Airbus
The carrier also has five standard A320-200s at its disposal, which are slightly younger, at 14.1 years old on average. A pair of these are on wet leases, with one apiece from Dan Air and GetJet Airlines, respectively. Data from aeroLOPA shows that Air Serbia’s A320-200s have either 174 or 180 seats onboard, again with the ability to flexibly configure the cabin depending on the business class load.
Air Serbia’s other smaller aircraft are its ATR 72 turboprops. At 33.2 years on average, the oldest of these are its three examples of the ATR 72-200 model, although all three are presently inactive. The carrier also had two examples of the ATR 72-500 (19.9 years old on average, one on lease from DAT LT) and seven ATR 72-600s (8.5 years old on average) at its disposal at the time of writing.
Going large
Air Serbia’s largest aircraft, and indeed, its only widebodies, are its pair of Airbus A330-200s. Flying out of the national airline’s hub at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG), data from Flightradar24 shows that these twinjets, which are 13.6 years old on average, fly to the likes of Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and New York JFK.
Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying
According to ch-aviation, the two aircraft have different seating configurations. Specifically, YU-ARB has space for 236 economy and 21 business class passengers onboard, while YU-ARC has 250 economy and 18 business class seats. The former of these aircraft features a staggered business layout with between three and five seats per row, while the latter has a more standard 2-2-2 setup.
Other types on lease
As we have seen from our existing analysis of Air Serbia’s fleet, the carrier is no stranger to a wet lease or two. As well as allowing it to grow its Airbus and ATR fleets, this strategy has also seen other aircraft types get in on the act.
For example, the Serbian flag carrier is currently operating two Boeing 737-800s from KlasJet on an ACMI basis. Additionally, it has wet-leased three aircraft from the Embraer E-Jet family across the same number of variants. These are an E175LR, an E190, and an E195, all of which have come from Marathon Airlines.
What do you make of Air Serbia’s present fleet? How many of its aircraft have you flown on? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
Sources: aeroLOPA, ch-aviation, Flightradar24
