Air Serbia plans to phase out its fleet of ten Airbus A319s over the next three to five years, replacing them with A320s and Embraer E195s. It is also considering a new generation E195-E2. Towards Tango Six Air Serbia CEO Jiri Marek said: “Over the next three to five years, our A319 aircraft will gradually be withdrawn from the fleet and returned to lessors. Some of them will be replaced by larger A320 aircraft and the rest will be used by Embraer. company replacement. I see a lot of confusion in the professional community, so I'll try to explain this as simply as possible. Our fleet strategy is very clear: if the direct operating costs of an aircraft are indeed lower than the models we currently fly, we will choose the new aircraft. Currently, there is no economic reason to replace the older Airbus models with new versions because the reduced fuel consumption costs will not compensate for the high cost of owning the new aircraft. Passengers will certainly not be tempted to fly the Airbus neo. Pay higher fares”.
Mr Marek explained that the airline was also seriously considering an updated E2 version of Embraer. “Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we started testing different types of regional aircraft, such as CRJ and Embraer. On paper, the E2 is much cheaper than the A319, and it seems likely to be cheaper than the E1 as well. If We have grown with Embraer, and if the E2 proves to be cheaper than the E1 in practice, why should we wait?” said Mr. Marek.
After several delays, the airline plans to introduce the first of two dry-leased E195-E1 jets to its fleet in the coming days. Mr Marek explained that the delay was regulatory in nature and the airline had not suffered any losses as a result. “Currently, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we expect the first dry-leased Embraer to begin operations as planned in the first half of October. The second should join during November. The technical status of both aircraft is It's perfect. It's well known in our industry that having perfect documentation is one of the main prerequisites for an aircraft to fly, and when it comes to bringing Embraer into our fleet, that's exactly what it's for. The new aircraft that are being added to the fleet, we want to do it step by step in a professional manner,” the CEO said.
Mr Marek added: “Indeed, we aimed to launch the first Embraer at the beginning of July. Before explaining why this was not done on time, I would like to emphasize that the two aircraft, although parked at Belgrade Airport, But not at our expense as their lease payments only start from the moment the aircraft pass our technical acceptance. However, we have a plan to have them in the fleet in the summer if any potential delays occur. Or we observe strong growth in demand and our Airbus fleet has sufficient capacity to respond to market changes, as we have done on several occasions in the past, when we determine that passenger numbers are growing above our available capacity. The decision was made to invest more resources, so we were in no way financially disadvantaged by the delay in their planned entry into service, but instead we made more money due to the strong demand and replacement with larger capacity Airbus aircraft.” .
Miroslav Musulin, head of Serbian Aerotechnics, pointed out that there are two main reasons for the delay in the introduction of Embraer aircraft: a thorough verification of the aircraft’s technical history and supply chain issues affecting the availability of parts. Mr Musulin said that as this was a new type of fleet, Air Serbia wanted to ensure proper integration, which involved extensive document review and technical inspections. The problem was compounded by the fact that the previous operator (who was also the owner) had disorganized records, requiring Air Serbia to track the service history of each part. Additionally, due to current market conditions, parts that previously took a week to source now take weeks.
