Good morning and welcome to my trip report! It’s been a while since I wrote one, so I decided to share with you my experience of the last week on board Air Serbia’s SOF-BEG flight. The flight itself is short (50 minutes on average), so I decided to take more photos than usual.
I took the metro from Serdika station to the airport. The journey takes about 40 minutes and costs only €0.80. The metro is clean inside and what I particularly liked is that there is always internet and phone reception.
The airport’s subway station is also quite nice and is just a few steps away from the terminal building.
SOF Terminal 2 from the outside. Personally, I always thought it looked nicer from the outside than the inside.
Check-in area. I remember the last two times I flew from Sofia, we were only able to enter the departure area after the check-in agent validated our travel documents. As a precautionary measure, I went to the check-in counter first, as they sent me back last year. I got there about 2 hours and 5 minutes before departure and to my surprise, I was already seventh in line. There was no one there and the screens were dark, but the airport departure board informed us which counters would serve JU passengers. At 1:50 before departure, two rather rude employees appeared and started the check-in process.
While I was standing in line, I looked at my fellow passengers. The first in line were six Norwegians who were flying on to OSL. I also noticed passengers who were flying to MXP, ARN, BUD, etc. We were accompanied by four Bulgaria Air flight attendants. All in all, today’s flight was 100% full. About 15 passengers were O&D passengers, the rest were transfer passengers.
I think Air Serbia should come up with something and actually start placing similar ads at different airports. In Sofia, JU was nowhere to be seen. Not a single ad, not a single poster… nothing. Not even that thing that measures your hand luggage. They really should do something about marketing. This is something their commercial director should think about, especially if they want to reduce seasonality.
Since last year they have repaired their airport a little bit. I think this has something to do with Bulgarian airports joining the Schengen area. Overall it is much better than before and their duty free shop is incomparably better than it used to be. I was also surprised by their prices, which were not excessive at all.
The departure area of SOF offers a great view of the tarmac. Pictured above is a LO E75 that was left like that for at least 45 minutes. All passengers were on board, the jet bridge was moved and pushback was waiting. The flight to WAW was delayed at least an hour due to ATC restrictions.
Gate area at SOF. At the end of this corridor there is a small non-Schengen area, which you enter after passing passport control.
Lufthansa’s A320 suffered the same fate as LO’s E75. It too had to wait for an hour due to air traffic control restrictions.
Here is our ride today, we arrive about ten minutes before the scheduled time from BEG.
Although our ATR arrived earlier than scheduled, it seemed like our flight was delayed due to poor ground services. I noticed that the bus that was supposed to pick up arriving passengers was delayed (the same thing happened to us), which delayed the entire disembarkation process. Also, it seemed to take a long time to unload the arriving baggage and load the departing one.
On top of that, boarding started about 15 minutes before departure and we were all crammed into this bus with no air conditioning and the doors wide open. As you can imagine, it was a hellish experience. On the other hand, on our bus in Belgrade, the air conditioning was on the whole time, so the whole wait was bearable.
After a short bus ride, we reached our plane at 4:05 p.m., the same time we were supposed to take off. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but boarding the passengers 40 minutes after the small ATR landed seems like a mismanagement problem to me.
I took my seat on a rather hot ATR. Although the cabin seemed to be in good condition, my seat was not. The seat back would not recline fully as it kept tilting backwards. I just realized that my tray table was broken as well. That being said, the crew on today’s flight were absolutely lovely, very charming and kind to the passengers. Their uniforms were very nice and they both looked very presentable. Great job JU.
We were a heavy ATR taking off on a hot summer day. Our climb was slow, gaining speed and altitude for at least 7 minutes before turning left and heading towards northwest Bulgaria.
As you can see, my tray table was a bit broken so everything kept sliding off. I informed the crew and they said they would inform the maintenance department once we got to Belgrade.
There wasn’t much to see below as everything became hazy as we approached Serbia.
Arriving during the afternoon rush hour, we flew north of Belgrade all the way to Indjija, where we made a sharp turn and came in for landing.
We landed safely at 4:22 p.m., just two minutes behind schedule. If SOF ground services had done a better job, we could have arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule. I usually follow SOF flights on FR24 and I noticed that their flight always has a long connection time. I don’t know if there is someone at JU who is in charge of this, but he/she should have noticed. When you have a plane full of connections, those extra 10 minutes mean a lot.
This is a stupidity of epic proportions and Vinci should have found a better solution. We were taken to this entrance where we had to climb about 30 steps to reach the departure area. There we were met by an airport employee who shouted “transfers” and showed passengers the door that took them directly to the departure area. We turned left and took the escalator up. Although this climb should not be a problem for younger passengers, I can imagine what it would be like for older ones carrying their hand luggage. Also, the stairs are narrow, ugly and with dirty walls.
Overall, Air Serbia offers a decent and basic service on its regional flights. The ATRs are extremely comfortable, the onboard product is suitable for such short regional flights and the crew seems to have improved in recent months. What I have noticed, however, is that the ground operations leave a lot to be desired. Not only was the turnaround in SOF chaotic and generally poorly managed, but our departure from BEG was also problematic.
We were the third to land (after an A320 from IST and an ATR from SJJ) so there was no one waiting when we reached passport control. After SOF, at least 15 aircraft landed, including the A332 from Chicago as well as two A321s from Lufthansa. I can only imagine what passport control looked like 10 minutes after we left. Thankfully they were preparing for it as they were getting ready to open another three passport counters in addition to the 3 or 4 that were already open and processing arriving passengers.
BEG-SOF was about 80% full and there was only one gate agent in charge of boarding. It took ages as very few passengers checked their passports. Someone called her and asked why it took so long. She replied that she was working alone and that no one bothered to do their job (i.e. checking their travel documents). About a month ago I flew on JU’s BEG-TGD flight (also operated by ATR) and before boarding started they called passengers by name to contact them so they could release them before boarding. I guess with the poor girl working alone that wasn’t an option.
This is just one of many examples that need to be fixed in JU’s ground operations. Many of these things are unacceptable as they tend to charge extra to their passengers. For example, my flight to Sofia cost me 38,700 RSD, or about 360€ (with hand luggage). When you pay that much for a flight, you expect a much more pleasant travel experience – both on board and at the airport.
I hope that Air Serbia will continue to expand its ATR fleet and thus its regional network. Even though they don’t stand out from the competition, they are far from a bad airline.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you enjoyed reading this report as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Greetings,
Nemjee
