LONDON – Air Serbia & Turkish Airlines have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for further cooperation between the two sides.
This deal was signed at the 78th IATA Annual General Meeting in Doha, Qatar, and will look at the potential for a joint venture.
On top of this, Air Serbia will introduce additional flights between Belgrade and Istanbul, with the full total expected to be around 10 flights per week.
In return, Turkish Airlines will insert wide-body aircraft on the same route as well, up to twice per week, bolstering further connectivity to up to 12 flights per week.
Executive Comments…
“We are pleased to further strengthen our good relations and cooperation with Turkish Airlines.”, stated Jiří Marek, CEO of Air Serbia.
It is our great pleasure to announce that Air Serbia and Turkish Airlines will continue to look for new commercial opportunities for creating efficient and mutually beneficial relationships while considering the option of joining forces to achieve better connectivity and offer for our customers through a possible Joint Venture on the services between Serbia and Türkiye.”
“In this way, we are contributing to the further improvement of relations between our two states, in the interest of users and communities in both countries”.
Commenting on this MoU Bilal Ekşi, CEO of Turkish Airlines said; “When we consider the global network today, we see how important partnership development is in the global aviation industry.”
“Increasing the bilateral relations between our countries and improving cooperation through our networks are essential for us, especially after the pandemic.”
“In this regard, we are delighted to sign this MoU with Air Serbia to explore enhanced cooperation opportunities and negotiate further to expand our existing partnership now.”
“We would like to thank Mr. Jiří Marek and his team on this occasion for their continuous support of our common works which will further contribute to the improvement of the relations between our airlines, countries, and communities.”
A Successful Cooperation So Far…
Both sides have had a high level of success so far in their existing cooperative deals.
Air Serbia has also added its JU code onto AnadoluJet flights, a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines, on flights between Ankara and Belgrade. On top of this, Turkish Airlines has added its TK code to Air Serbia flights between Nis & Istanbul as well as Kraljevo & Istanbul.
With the potential of a joint venture on the way, it will be interesting to see what sort of markets they will want to penetrate with this, or whether it will be a representation of reinforcement of what they have currently in their portfolio.
Overall, this is definitely a partnership to keep an eye out on in the coming months and years ahead, as there is the potential for huge success, particularly in the Eastern European market as well.
Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how the Ukraine conflict will have a bearing on this, especially with Serbia & Turkey being known as relative allies to Russia.
Either way, time will tell how far this cooperation will go, and it is definitely going to be a strong relationship we will see.
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