Pogacar asks Air Serbia: who chartered and paid for the Tivat flight

Novi Sad city councillor Miran Pogacar filed a formal request with Air Serbia on June 3, asking the carrier to disclose who chartered and paid for the disputed charter flight, designated BEG5COC. The request came after passengers on that flight were turned back from the airport in Tivat, and Pogacar framed his request as two specific questions.

Pogacar asked the company to state who had chartered the entire aircraft and whether the flight was financed from public funds. He also called on Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to deny that the state had paid for the flight, if that was not the case. The identity of the party that chartered the aircraft and the source of the funding had not been officially clarified by the time of publication.

What exactly is the councillor asking

Pogacar’s request comes down to two questions he put to Air Serbia.

Who chartered the entire aircraft?

Was the flight paid for with the money of Serbia’s taxpayers?

Alongside those questions, the councillor publicly urged President Vucic to respond and deny any state involvement in financing the flight, if no such involvement exists. The request was addressed to the airline as a request for information, not as a formal investigation by competent authorities.

Based on available reports, the sequence of events appears to be the following:

• a charter flight designated BEG5COC was bound for the airport in Tivat
• passengers were, according to the same reports, turned back from Tivat airport
• Pogacar filed an information request with Air Serbia on June 3
• President Vucic was called on to deny that the flight was funded from the budget
• Air Serbia, according to available reports, had not commented publicly by the time of publication

The company has so far neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, so it remains to be seen whether and when it will issue an official answer to the questions raised.

Who actually paid for the flight, and was the money public?

It is worth clearly separating what has been confirmed from what has not. It is confirmed that the councillor filed a request and what question he posed. The identity of the party that chartered the flight and the source of the funding, on the other hand, have not been officially established.

The claim that the flight was paid for with taxpayer money remains, for now, an allegation coming from the opposition side and has not been independently verified. No official document has been published that would confirm or refute who chartered the aircraft. Neither Air Serbia nor state bodies, according to available reports, have provided an answer that would clarify the matter.

Raising questions about the spending of public money is a legitimate part of an elected councillor’s work, but a question is not in itself proof. Until an answer arrives from the company, or a document that supports either version, the story remains at the level of an open question. Do you think the public has the right to know who chartered and paid for a flight like this?