Air Serbia carried 4.57 million passengers in 2025
The national carrier reported revenue of 719.5 million euros and net profit of 45.3 million euros, with an average cabin load factor of 77.3 per cent over the year.
Air Serbia carried 4.57 million passengers in 2025 and posted total company revenue of 719.5 million euros, with net profit of 45.3 million euros, according to figures the national carrier released at the end of March, the portal Zamaaero reported. Excluding handling services, revenue from the core business topped 700 million euros for the second consecutive year.
The average cabin load factor stood at 77.3 per cent, up 2.4 percentage points on 2024. The airline operated 48,925 flights in total, 4 per cent more than the previous year. Chief executive Jiri Marek told the daily Bankar that traffic growth was driven by a combination of network expansion and rising demand on key transfer routes to the Middle East.
Etihad and the transfer model
The strategic relationship with Etihad Airways, a minority shareholder and operating partner since 2013, gained further weight in May 2026 when Etihad launched its own Abu Dhabi-Belgrade service using an Airbus A320, increasing capacity on the route with a daily frequency. Bankar reported that the current cooperation is structured as a codeshare arrangement with joint sales channels and schedule coordination for transfers through the Abu Dhabi hub onwards to Asia.
In the first four months of 2026 Air Serbia carried its millionth passenger, continuing a trend of steady growth. The portal EX-YU Aviation News, in its December report, said negotiations with Etihad and other partners on the future ownership structure are ongoing, but neither side has disclosed the specific scale of any equity transfer.
Who is losing, who is gaining on the competitive front
Air Serbia’s positive results coincide with the retreat of regional rivals from certain routes. Croatia Airlines dropped its daily direct Zagreb-Frankfurt service in the 2025-26 winter schedule, while the Lufthansa Group cut capacity on routes to Sofia and Skopje, partially redirecting transfer passengers via Belgrade. The Civil Aviation Directorate of Serbia reports that traffic at Nikola Tesla Airport in the first quarter of 2026 was up 9.2 per cent on the same period in 2025.
Set against the historical backdrop, the figure of 4.57 million passengers represents a recovery to pre-Covid levels. In 2019 Air Serbia carried 2.8 million passengers, meaning that over six years the volume of traffic has nearly doubled.
Share of airport revenue
Air Serbia generates around 53 per cent of all traffic at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade, making it the dominant user of the airport’s infrastructure capacity. Concessionaire VINCI Airports, which has run the airport since 2018, reported total passenger traffic of 8.7 million and revenue of 256 million euros for 2025, growth of 11.3 per cent on 2024. The aeronautical charges Air Serbia pays the airport per passenger range from 14 to 26 euros depending on destination and aircraft type, under VINCI’s current schedule of charges.
Fleet and capex plan
Air Serbia’s active fleet in May 2026 numbers 25 aircraft: 16 Airbus A319 and A320 units, six ATR 72 aircraft for regional routes and three widebody Airbus A330-200s for intercontinental destinations to New York, Tianjin and Shanghai. In February 2026 the company signed a memorandum with Airbus for two new A321XLR aircraft, with delivery in 2027, which will lift capacity on routes of up to four and a half hours by around 19 per cent per delivery.
Traffic on the Belgrade-Tianjin route, opened in October 2025 as the first direct link between a Serbian carrier and China, has run at an 84 per cent cabin load factor over its first seven months, according to an Air Serbia statement. Commercial director Bojan Arandjelovic told the daily Politika that the route “confirmed the cargo-passenger combination thesis” and that cargo yield per flight is around 90,000 euros. The next set of financial results, for the first quarter of 2026, is scheduled for the end of June.
