oneworld

Air Serbia will next month begin codesharing with Gulf carrier Qatar Airways, building on an existing interline agreement. The Serbian carrier, which has just indicated it returned profit last year, will from the start of February add its code to Qatar Airways' five-times-weekly service between their respective hubs in Belgrade and Doha. It will initially codeshare on Qatar’s onward flights to Adelaide, Baku, Brisbane, Tbilisi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Muscat, Nairobi, Perth, Seychelles, Singapore and Sydney. Further connections are lined up as part of the co-operation. Qatar for its part will codeshare on Air Serbia destinations including flights to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Slovenia. Air Serbia has a long-standing codeshare with another Gulf carrier Etihad Airways, which helped revamp the carrier in 2013 as part of its equity-alliance strategy. Etihad has since reduced its stake in Air Serbia to around 16% after the government increased its stake during recapitalisations carried out since the pandemic hit. Air Serbia yesterday revealed preliminary figures showing it returned to the black for the first time since the pandemic last year, posting a profit of E21m for 2022. That was achieved on passenger numbers of around 2.75m, just 2% below 2019 levels. Air Serbia CE Jiri Marek says: ”I am immensely happy with the good financial result achieved last year, which is already visible, because this is the real indicator of our company’s ability to react quickly and recognise opportunities for recovery and growth. This result comes after two extremely difficult years, not only for our company, but for the entire commercial aviation sector globally. We have ambitious plans for this year, some of which we have already announced,” he adds. This includes the launch of flights to Chicago in May, marking its second US destination after New York JFK and the restoration of a route last flown 30 years ago.<br/>

A Qantas flight to Fiji was forced to return to Sydney Airport on Thursday after the aircraft’s fault indicators signalled a potential mechanical issue. QF101 from Sydney to Nadi spent close to two hours circling off the coast of NSW as it awaited a slot before landing at about 10.50am AEDT. The grounded flight is the second incident for the airline in two days, after an engine failure on a Boeing 737-838 travelling to Sydney from Auckland resulted in a temporary mayday alert on Wednesday. A Qantas spokesperson said the aircraft’s pilots returned the Boeing 737-800 headed for Fiji as a precaution in keeping with the carrier’s safety guidelines, and did not indicate an emergency situation. “The pilots followed standard procedures and the aircraft has landed normally in Sydney.” The twin-engine aircraft was not given priority landing by AirServices Australia – the government body that regulates Australia’s skies – as it was not an emergency situation. Fault indicators are lights inside the cockpit, which illuminate automatically in response to a potential hazard. The fault indicator prompting the pilots to turn back did not relate to an issue with the engine. The airline’s engineers will now examine the aircraft. The Qantas spokesperson said the carrier was working on organising a new flight to Fiji for the affected passengers and thanked them for their patience. In the days before Christmas, a Qantas Sydney-to-London flight via Singapore was forced to make an emergency landing in Azerbaijan after pilots observed a fault indicator in the cockpit. This occurred due to a faulty fire sensor in the cargo hold.<br/>

A Qantas Airways flight from New Zealand landed safely at Sydney airport on Wednesday after the airline said it had issued a distress signal due to an issue with one of its engines. The Boeing 737-800 jet from Auckland had an in-flight engine shutdown and issued a "mayday" call while flying over water an hour from its destination of Sydney, a Qantas spokesperson said in a statement. The mayday signal, which indicates grave and imminent danger, was downgraded to "Possible Assistance Needed" before landing, the spokesperson added. All 145 passengers disembarked normally when the plane landed in Sydney around 3.30pm local time (0430 GMT). "While in-flight engine shutdowns are rare, and would naturally be concerning for passengers, our pilots are trained to manage them safely and aircraft are designed to fly for an extended period on one engine," the airline said. Passengers told local media they heard a loud bang mid-flight but had not realised there was a problem until the pilot made an announcement on landing. "I turned on my phone and my wife had called me 18 times, 'Have you landed, have you landed?'" an unnamed passenger told reporters at the airport. Qantas said it would share more information once engineers had finished inspecting the aircraft.<br/>