Air Serbia may be just three years old, but it’s actually a 90+ year company that was previously owned by the Serbian government and operated under many former names including Jat and Yugoslav Airlines. Etihad took a 49% stake in the airline and helped fund the new operation known as Air Serbia. Interestingly enough, Air Serbia CEO Dane Kondic told Business Insider in an interesting read that he was given minimal time to get the airline running under its new mandates.
“I was installed as the CEO on the 11th of September in 2013 and our first flight under the guise of Air Serbia was on the 26th of October,” Kondic said. “We had to re-size, re-fleet, retrain, and rebrand the airline in six short weeks.”
He also shares details on how Etihad and its partner airlines enable Air Serbia new New York flight.
The Airbus A330 used for the route was leased from Jet Airways, while the Air Serbia pilots were trained in Italy by Alitalia. At the same time, Etihad provided Air Serbia with ground staff in the US as well as training for its cabin crew.
“A small impoverished airline such as ours would never in a million years be able to fly across the Atlantic if it wasn’t for us being a part of this group of like-minded airlines coming together as Etihad Airways partners,” Kondic said.
Check out the full read here.
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