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 last week’s experience onboard Air Serbia’s SOF-BEG flight. The flight itself is short (on average 50-something minutes) so I decided to take more pictures than usual.
I took the metro from the Serdika station to the airport. The ride takes roughly 40 minutes and it costs just €0.80. Inside the metro is clean and what I especially liked is that there is internet and phone coverage at all times.
The airport metro station is also quite nice and is located just a few steps from the terminal building.
SOF terminal 2 from the outside. Personally I always thought it looked better on the outside than it did on the inside.
Check-in area. I remember the last two times I flew from Sofia, we couldn’t proceed before to the departures area without the check-in agent validating our travel documents. As a precautionary measure I headed first to the check-in desk since last year they sent me back. I got there some 02 hours and 05 minutes before take off and to my surprise I was already 7th in line. There was no one there and the screens were dark but the airport’s departure board informed us which desks will be servicing JU passengers. At 01.50 before take off, two rather rude agents showed up and started the check-in process.
While standing in line I was looking at my fellow passengers. First in line were six Norwegians who were connecting to OSL. I also noticed passengers were heading to MXP, ARN, BUD etc. Traveling with us were 4 Bulgaria Air cabin crew. All in all, today’s flight was 100% full. Roughly 15 passengers were O&D while the rest were transfers.
I think Air Serbia should grow a pair and actually start placing similar ads across various airports. In Sofia there was no sign of JU anywhere. Not a single ad, not a single poster… nothing. Not even that thing to measure your hand luggage. They should really do something about marketing. This is something their commercial director needs to think about especially if they want to reduce seasonality.
Since last year they fixed their airport a little bit. I think it has to do with Bulgarian airports entering the Schengen zone. Overall this is much better than before and their duty free shop is incomparably better compared to what they had in the past. I was also surprised by their prices which were not inflated at all.
SOF departures area offers great views of the tarmac. Pictured above is a LO E75 which was sitting like this for at least 45 minutes. All passengers were boarded, airbridge was moved and the pushback was waiting. The flight to WAW was delayed by at least an hour due to ATC restrictions.
Gate area at SOF. At the end of this corridor you have a small non-Schengen area which you access after clearing the passport control.
Lufthansa’s A320 suffered the same fate as LO’s E75. It also waited like this for an hour due to ATC restrictions.
Here’s our ride for today arriving from BEG some ten minutes ahead of schedule.
Despite our ATR arriving ahead of schedule, it seems like our flight was going to be delayed due to poor ground services. I noticed that the bus that was supposed to take arriving passengers was late (same happened to us) which delayed the whole deplaning process. Also, seems like it took them a long time to unload arriving luggage and then to load departing ones.
On top of that, boarding started some 15 minutes before take off and we were all packed in this bus with no a/c and with all doors wide open. As you can imagine this was a hellish experience. On the other hand, our bus in Belgrade had the a/c running the whole time so it made the whole wait bearable.
After a short bus ride we reached our plane at 16.05, so the same time when we were supposed to be taking off. It might be just me but boarding your passengers 40 minutes after your small ATR landed seems like a mismanagement issue.
I took my seat in a rather hot ATR. Even though the cabin seemed to be in good shape my seat wasn’t. The seatback could not be put in a full upright position as it kept on reclining. I was about to find out that my traytable was also broken. That said, the crew on today’s flight were absolutely lovely, very charming and pleasant to the passengers. Their uniforms were very nice and they both looked very presentable. Good job JU.
We were one heavy ATR taking off on a hot summer day. Our climb was slow and we were gathering speed and altitude for least 7 minutes before we made a left turn and headed towards north-west Bulgaria.
As you can see my traytable was somewhat broken so everything kept on sliding off. I informed the crew and they said they will let maintenance know once we were in Belgrade.
There wasn’t much to see below as once we approach Serbia everything below became hazy.
Since we were arriving during the afternoon rushhour we flew north of Belgrade all the way to Indjija where we made a sharp turn and took our turn to land.
We landed safely at 16.22 so just two minutes behind schedule. If SOF ground services did a better job we could have arrived ten minutes before planned arrival time. I usually track SOF flights on FR24 and I noticed that their flight always has a long turnaround time. I don’t know if JU has someone who is in charge of this but he/she should have noticed this. When you have a plane full of transfers, those extra 10 minutes mean a lot.
Now this a stupidity of epic proportion and Vinci should have found a better solution. We were taken to this entrance where we had to climb some 30 steps to reach departures area. There we were met by an airport employee who shouted transfers and showed passengers to the door which took them straight to the departures area. We few turned left and took the escalators up. Even though this climb should not be a problem for younger passengers, I can imgaine what it would look like for older ones who are carrying their handluggage. On top of that the stairs are narrow, ugly with dirty walls.
Overall, Air Serbia offers a decent and basic service on their regional flights. Their Atrs are extremely comfortable, the onboard product is suitable for such short regional hops and their crew seem to have improved in recent months. One thing I noticed is that their operations on the ground leave a lot to be desired. Not only was the turnaround in SOF chaotic and generally mismanaged, our departure from BEG had problems as well.
We were the third to land (after an A320 from IST and an ATR from SJJ) so by the time we reached the passport control there was no one waiting. After SOF at least 15 planes landed including the A332 from Chicago as well as two A321 by Lufthansa. I can only imagine what the passport control looked like 10 minutes after we were gone. Luckily they were getting ready for them as they were preparing to open another three passport booths next to the 3 or 4 that were already open and processing arriving passengers.
BEG-SOF was roughly 80% full and there was only one gate agent in charge of boarding. It took forever as very few passengers had their passports checked. Someone called her to ask why it was taking so long. She replied that she is working alone and that no one bothered to do their job (as in check their travel documents). About a month ago I flew on JU’s BEG-TGD flight (also operated by the Atr) and before boarding started they would call out passengers by their names to contact them so that they could clear them before boarding started. I guess with the poor girl working alone that was not an option.
This is just one of many examples that need to be fixed when it comes to JU ground operations. Many of these things are unacceptable as they tend to charge their passengers a premium. For example, my flight to Sofia cost me 38.700 RSD which is roughly €360 (with hand luggage). When you pay so much for a flight one expects a much smoother travel experience – both onboard and at the airport.
I hope Air Serbia will keep on expanding their Atr fleet and with it their regional network. Even though there is nothing special that sets them apart from their competition, they are far from being a bad carrier.
Thank you for coming along with me on this journey and I hope you enjoyed reading the report as much as I enjoyed writing it for you!
Regards,
Nemjee
