As more European airlines are pulling back on their services to destinations across mainland China, Air Serbia is bucking that trend by announcing it will begin direct flights between Belgrade and Shanghai. The Serbian national airline will operate flights on the new route twice a week commencing January 11, 2024, with flights from Belgrade to Shanghai on Tuesdays and Saturdays, while return flights from Shanghai to Belgrade will take place on Wednesdays and Sundays.
The airline has already confirmed that the flights between Belgrade-Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG) and Shanghai-Pudong Airport (PVG) will continue to operate throughout the northern summer of 2025 and that tickets are already on sale for these services. All flights will be operated by the carrier’s fleet of Airbus A330-200 wide-bodied aircraft. The new service joins another new operation from Belgrade to Guangzhou (CAN), announced on September 30, 2024.
Through its main hub at Belgrade, the airline will offer passengers flying in from Shanghai onward connections via its services to Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Ljubljana, Milan, Rome, Frankfurt, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Podgorica, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Krakow, Oslo, Bologna, Venice, Zurich, and other cities across its network.
“Just nine days ago, on Monday 30 September 2024, we launched scheduled flights between Belgrade and Guangzhou,” said Jiri Marek, CEO of Air Serbia. “This is our second destination in the People’s Republic of China, after Tianjin, which was added to our network on 9 December 2022. With the introduction of direct flights to Shanghai on 11 January 2025, along with the visa-free regime and the recently signed free trade agreement, we are contributing to the further strengthening of economic relations, business, tourism, and cultural ties between Serbia and China.”
“We are confident that our scheduled flights between the capital of Serbia and Shanghai will facilitate faster business and tourism travel, as well as more efficient exchange of goods and services between our two traditionally friendly countries,” he added.
The addition of flights to both Guangzhou and Shanghai by Air Serbia comes amid a recent plethora of announcements by other Western carriers that have said they will be scaling back operations to Chinese destinations in the coming months. SAS Scandinavian will be stopping its Copenhagen to Shanghai flights in early November 2024 when LOT Polish will also end its three-times weekly Warsaw to Beijing service.
Three other European airlines have also announced the cessation of China routes before the IATA winter scheduling season starts in late October 2024. Virgin will end London-Heathrow to Shanghai flights while British Airways will discontinue London-Heathrow to Beijing services. Lufthansa has also announced that it will be ending its Frankfurt to Beijing operations.
With European carriers unable to use Russian airspace since that country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the alternative routes to China are adding up to three hours of flying time in each direction, making many services economically unviable. In the meantime, Chinese carriers have been increasing services to Europe, as travelers from that country have been favoring the homegrown airlines and their quicker flight routings.
Chinese carriers’ capacity to European destinations has grown substantially since the pandemic. Data shows that these carriers offered 1.93 million one-way non-stop seats between China and Europe in the third quarter of 2024, from 1.35 million in the same period in 2019, representing an increase of 43%. In contrast, European airline capacity has fallen from 1.04 million seats to just 555,000. This drop has seen the market share on flights between China and Europe held by Chinese-based carriers increase from 57% to 78%.