January 30 (SeeNews) - Flag carrier Air Serbia carried 2.81 million passengers on scheduled and charter flights in 2019, up 9.5% on the previous year, it said.
The company operated 33,322 flights, including 2,370 under its charter brand Aviolet, while network capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASK), totalled 4.455 billion, Air Serbia said in a statement on Wednesday.
The average passenger load factor in Air Serbia was 72% in 2019, while sales of increasingly popular ancillary services grew 28%.
"In 2019, we delivered the largest network expansion and carried more passengers since we had started operations as Air Serbia. By launching new flights from as many as three airports in Serbia, we have confirmed our position of regional leader in the sphere of commercial aviation and given our contribution to the development of business and tourism in Serbia, as well as regional interconnectivity," Air Serbia CEO Duncan Naysmith stated.
Last year, Air Serbia launched as many as ten new flights from its home Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport – eight scheduled flights throughout the year to Kiev, Madrid, Barcelona, Rijeka, Krasnodar, Helsinki, Cairo and Istanbul, as well as seasonal flights to Nice and Zadar.
The airline also launched 12 new flights from Nis airport, as well as a flight to Vienna from the Morava Airport near Kraljevo. The introduction of new flights last year expanded Air Serbia's network to 61 destinations.
Air Serbia also signed a codeshare agreement with the Finnish airline Finnair in 2019, increasing the total number of codeshare partnerships to 14 and expanding its virtual codeshare network to 94 destinations.