Following the increased pressure from Europe, Serbian national flag carrier Air Serbia will have to reset to factory settings and run eight flights to Moscow as it did before the crisis rather than the current 15 flights a week, Politika newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The issue has arisen after Serbia decided to increase flights at a time when EU countries, the UK, and candidate countries all banned Russian carriers from traversing their skies or landing in their airports as part of wide-ranging sanctions.
Just how overwhelming the interest for these flights is shows the fact that there are no tickets available for March. Several tickets were made available on Tuesday with a price tag of around 1.200 euros for a one-way ticket but were sold out in a heartbeat.
Those that are not in a hurry can travel in mid-April when the price of the one-way ticket ranges from 218 euros to 340 euros providing they can find an available seat due to decreased number of flights.
Serbia has been made the only state whose airline can freely operate air routes between Russia and European destinations after the EU’s ban on Russian aircraft entering the EU’s airspace as a response to the Ukraine invasion and Russia’s countersanctions that followed.
Since it increased the number of flights instead of keeping the number of flights at the same level or banning them just all other European countries, Serbia has been exposed to pressure from various directions.
One of them was the EU, which has reminded that Serbia is expected to align its foreign policy with that of the EU considering it’s a candidate country.
Branding Air Serbia a window to Europe for Russia, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia, Urmas Paet, stressed that the Serbian air carrier should be banned from flying in the EU airspace because Serbia ignores the EU sanctions of the union against Russia.
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