Air Serbia

Is Air Serbia safe?

Mostly yes, with two catches. Air Serbia has had no fatal accident since its JAT days in 1973 and has not written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary an aircraft on its own certificate. It passed the IATA safety audit (IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary), and Serbia applies EU aviation rules. We score it 82, below Croatia Airlines and above TAROM.

The points it loses come from the fleet, which has no new-generation jets, and from where it flies. Air Serbia still flies to Moscow, into airspace where the EU's safety agency advises all airlines not to operate.

Air Serbia and JAT: one airline

Air Serbia is not a new airline. JAT (Jugoslovenski Aerotransport) flew for Yugoslavia from 1947, became Jat Airways in 2003, and was reorganised and renamed Air Serbia in October 2013, when Etihad Airways took 49%. Etihad cut its stake to 18% in 2021 and left entirely in 2023, when the Serbian state recapitalised the airline. Because it is the same company under a new name, we count JAT's history as Air Serbia's own.

That history has fatal crashes, but all are old. The last was on 11 September 1973, when a Caravelle descended into cloud and hit Babin Zub peak in Montenegro's Maganik mountains; all 41 people died. In November 1974 a DC-9 was destroyed on approach to Belgrade with no deaths. The best-known JAT loss, the DC-9 that broke up over Czechoslovakia in January 1972 with one survivor, was a bomb. We describe it but do not count it as an accident, because it was unlawful interference. None of these falls inside our 20-year scoring window. The one accident in that window on Air Serbia's own certificate was minor: on 12 September 2019, while an A319 arriving from Athens was parking at Belgrade, its left engine hit the air bridge. Nobody was hurt, but Serbia's investigators classed the damage as substantial, which makes it an accident rather than an incident.

The 2024 Belgrade overrun

On 18 February 2024, Air Serbia flight JU324 to Düsseldorf ran off the end of runway 30L at Belgrade during take-off. The crew had lined up at the wrong intersection, D5 instead of D6, which left them 1,273 metres of runway instead of 2,349. A controller warned them; they recalculated on a tablet and accepted a take-off from D5. At 100 knots they saw the runway was too short, chose to continue, and hit objects beyond its end as the aircraft lifted off. The Embraer E195 returned with holes in the fuselage and a fuel leak. Nobody was hurt, but the aircraft was written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary.

The jet and its crew came on a wet lease from Marathon Airlines, a Greek airline flying under a Greek certificate; the aircraft carried a Danish registration, OY-GDC. Under our rules the accident counts against Marathon, not Air Serbia. Serbia's investigation board, the CINS, issued its final report in August 2025. It found the direct cause was a take-off from an intersection without enough runway, with undisciplined crew communication while taxiing, wrong data entered into the performance app (including the wrong runway direction) and flap and thrust settings left unchanged for the longer runway. It also found that Marathon's operations manual had no procedure for a change of departure point after taxiing and no line-up checklist. Its recommendations went to the Greek and Italian authorities, Marathon and the airport, not to Air Serbia. Air Serbia still relies on wet leases each summer, with about eight leased aircraft planned for 2026, so check who operates your flight. Four of them fly all year: Bulgaria Air supplies Embraer E190s with its own crews and maintenance under a deal that runs until the end of the 2027 summer season, and those flights count on Bulgaria Air's record, not Air Serbia's.

How strong is Serbia's oversight?

Serbia is not in the EU and not an EASA member state. It is part of the European Common Aviation Area, though, which means it applies EU aviation rules and lets EASA inspect its Civil Aviation Directorate. In March 2022 EASA inspected airworthiness and air operations and found the directorate short of staff; the EU's 2022 progress report said a recruitment plan was addressing it. The FAA rates Serbia Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary, which allows Air Serbia's flights to the United States, and no Serbian airline is on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary. We score Air Serbia's oversight 84: below the 90 for EU airlines with IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary, and above the 80 we give Turkish airlines, whose regulator does not apply EU rules.

Fleet and incidents

At the start of 2026 Air Serbia planned about 31 aircraft of its own: ten A319s that are being retired, a few A320s built in 2007 and 2008, four A330-200s for long-haul, ten ATR 72-600 turboprops and a growing number of E195s, some of them built around 2015. It has no A320neos or other new-generation jets. A larger renewal is not expected before 2027.

Its serious incidents are mostly technical. In December 2024 an A319 heard a loud bang at about 9,500 feet after leaving Belgrade and returned; part of the left engine's thrust reverser had fallen off. In 2022 an ATR 72 diverted to Budapest with electrical smoke in the cockpit, and in 2017 another lost a piece of structure near Sofia. None has led to a finding against the crews that we could find.

Flying Air Serbia: what to know

• Check who flies your summer flight. Wet-leased aircraft from other airlines fly under those airlines' certificates and crews. The operator is on the booking.
• Weigh the Moscow route yourself. Russian air defences fire at drones around Moscow, and airports there close at short notice. Delays and diversions are common; the risk of being misidentified is small but outside the airline's control.
• Long-haul is on older jets. The A330-200s have no new-generation replacement yet.

How we scored it

The accident record (92) is strong because JAT's crashes are more than 40 years old. Oversight (84) sits just below the EU level. The fleet (66) and the Moscow flights, which hold the environment score to 70, cost the most.