Luka Popović: With visa abolishment, I think traffic will take off
Aviation expert talks Kosovo air travel and codeshare controversy.
If it has to do with commercial aviation and the former Yugoslavia, chances are that Luka Popović has written about it. Popović is the founder of EX-YU Aviation News, a website dedicated to, well, aviation news across former Yugoslavia.
Born in Australia, Popović started the website 16 years ago, in what was his last year of high school. He moved to Belgrade for university in 2009, completing his degree in political science, international relations and affairs in 2013. He worked for a time as a broadcast journalist for BBC and now works for a British aviation events magazine, in addition to single-handedly running EX-YU Aviation News.
For Popović, no news item is too small to be covered, from notes about the CEO of Podgorica’s airport meeting with Ryanair after it announced plans to suspend almost all flights from Podgorica during the 2024-2025 winter season to forecasts of which airports in former Yugoslavia have the most capacity scheduled for August 2024. The website received 2.3 million page views in July 2024.
EX-YU Aviation News’ readers are mostly aviation enthusiasts and industry professionals. It’s not every person out there who is immediately drawn to stories about decreasing passenger numbers at Skopje International Airport stemming from issues with the engines for Airbus A320neo-family aircraft, which have forced Wizz Air — the Hungarian airline that is one of Skopje’s largest — to ground a large number of aircraft and thus reduce flights. But for those who are interested in such news, the website is a trove of information and allows one to view political, economic and sociological trends through the lens of the aviation industry.
For instance, a recent article covered the Tourism Association of the Canton of Sarajevo issuing a public call for airlines to introduce new routes to Sarajevo, offering to subsidize these routes. Whether a direct air link between Sarajevo and, say, Rotterdam, is created may not attract robust public interest, yet the call does have significance. It’s a reflection of local authorities’ ongoing effort to attract tourists to Sarajevo and commitment to investing public money to form new air connections to augment the flow of international tourists coming to Sarajevo.
The comments from readers that accompany each article often contain as much helpful insight and analysis as the stories themselves. For instance, a story published on August 16, 2024 about Air Serbia announcing a new route to Nice, had over 100 comments in its first day online. Some commenters speculated about this being a potential connection for rich Russians traveling through Serbia to the French Riviera or Chinese tourists flying to Nice through Belgrade, connecting from one of Air Serbia’s direct flights to three different cities in China. Others lamented the fact that Air Serbia chose Nice over Manchester, likely because Serbian citizens do not have visa free travel to the U.K: “No visa free travel for Serbians to England. Thank you UK for not allowing Serbians to spend their tourist money in England.”
The website’s Vintage section features an array of photographs of old aircraft, airports and promotional materials for Jugoslovenski Aerotransport, or JAT, the old Yugoslav airline. One example is a multilingual advertisement from the 1980s calling on diaspora communities in the U.S. to “Come and visit your Old Country” while assuring that “Already in our plane you will find a pleasant and snug nook of Yugoslavia.” The bulk of these are from Popović’s personal archive, which comes from his uncle, who was an official photographer for JAT.
Additionally, for those who maintain a burning curiosity about what it is like to travel from Niš to Tirana on Air Serbia via Belgrade or countless other specific journeys to or from the region, the Trip Reports section has highly detailed reader-submitted trip reviews. These often contain delightful nuggets such as “Truth be told, the cabin was truly falling apart but as an aviation enthusiast I could say that I enjoyed every single minute of it” in reference to flying on a 31-year-old Air Serbia ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop from Belgrade to Tirana.
K2.0 caught up with Popović to pick his brain about the state of the aviation industry across former Yugoslavia, what it’s like to run a niche news website with a highly active and informed readership and what makes the commercial aviation industry in Kosovo unique.
K2.0: What was your journey to creating EX-YU Aviation News? Where did you get the idea for the website?
Luka Popović: A lot of my family members worked in aviation, so I grew up around it. I always listened to their stories from work and was always interested. I had the privilege to travel a lot when I was younger and that also had an influence. You’re not just listening about these stories, you’re actually on flights seeing how it all works and so on.
I was born in Australia and I lived there for quite a while. I was in my last year of high school when I started EX-YU Aviation News. This was in 2008 so it’s been 16 years now. It was really a spur of the moment thing. I didn’t have any plan to grow it. Especially back then, the internet was still in its kind of early stages. You didn’t think about monetization and stuff like that.
I was interested in aviation globally, but in this region, I could never find any news. Most of the news stories about aviation were in the mainstream media and if you know a bit about aviation you could see that the person writing it had no clue about it. So I wanted to create a space where you could have all this news in one place. I always liked writing, and English was my favorite subject, so I decided to put together the two things that I love: aviation and writing. I basically created this website overnight.
Despite all the differences and everything that has happened over the past decades, I still think this region is interconnected.
I really didn’t have any goals in terms of growing it or how long it would last; it just kind of happened. I enjoyed it. It was a hobby. So I just started writing and of course when you start writing and you start seeing people interacting, you see that the visits to the site are growing. You of course start to take more notice and put more time and effort into it. And that’s how it started. It had a very small audience in the beginning, but over time it grew. I realized that the only way that I could retain an audience was if I wrote basically on a daily basis, so since then, every single day — New Year’s Day is the only day when there’s no news — it’s been a journey.
Despite all the differences and everything that has happened over the past decades, I still think this region is interconnected. Even though the markets are not all the same, they have many similarities. So I think it made sense to create for this former Yugoslav region.
The Vintage section has a large collection of photographs picturing flight attendants, aircraft and select groups of passengers such as Yugoslav Olympic teams departing for competitions abroad. Photos courtesy of EX-YU Aviation News.
Why do you think people are interested in this sort of news? Are readers concentrated in former Yugoslavia, or do you have a global reach?
It’s really a global reach. Of course, the top three countries are from the former Yugoslavia: Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, or Croatia and Slovenia. But the next ones are the U.S., U.K., Australia. Of course, I think it’s countries where there are diasporas from the former Yugoslavia, but over time I’ve noticed a lot of audiences that are not from this region. They’re just interested in aviation.
EX-YU Aviation News is the only website that publishes aviation news from this region in English. Since it’s a region that’s not well covered in global aviation media, it’s the only source of news. The site has a weekly newsletter, and I can see the email addresses people are subscribing from. I notice a lot of emails from airports and airlines — foreign, completely — and that’s interesting to me.
I think this region has a really big legacy in aviation, and people may be more interested in aviation in this region than in other parts of Europe.
As for why, I think this region has a really big legacy in aviation, and people may be more interested in aviation in this region than in other parts of Europe. I think that it’s because of that legacy, because aviation was such a big part of the former Yugoslavia. JAT was a strong airline, which for that time was really quite a successful one. So I think that has something to do with it as well.
What would you identify as some of the similarities in the markets of the successor states of Yugoslavia, which you touched on in an earlier answer?
One of the trends is a large portion of a segment called visiting friends and relatives. This is diaspora traffic. It generates a lot of travel in the region. The markets themselves are a bit different. Croatia, for example, is a seasonal market that relies a lot on the coast. But there’s also Kosovo or Macedonia, which rely on that diaspora traffic.
But they’re also all similar in a sense that with a few exceptions, they don’t have national carriers. That has an impact as well on traffic and travel in the region. They’re relatively small markets that are expanding quickly. They were quite late to get low-cost carriers [airlines such as EasyJet and Wizz Air, who offer cheap base prices while charging extra fees for items like checked baggage]. That’s now really developing in the region, so people can travel all around.
One of the most interesting aspects of the website is the comments sections, which are often as informative and information-filled as the news items themselves. There’s really a lot of meaningful dialogue that happens. Why do you think this is?
Yeah, that’s a good question. I guess it has something to do with the niche. People who read the site are really interested in what they’re reading. Also, I think moderation has something to do with it. I try to, as quickly as possible, get rid of any nasty comments towards one another, nationalistic comments.
I'm one person and there're on average around 150 comments per day.
Of course, you can’t always do it because I’m one person and there’re on average around 150 comments per day. But you kind of — I don’t want this to sound bad — but you kind of train your audience to keep to the topic, to write professionally. I think that has sort of an impact. When the site started, it wasn’t so much the case. There were a lot more arguments and things like that. But over time, because of that moderation, people know that if they write something that’s off topic, it won’t be there anymore. So they kind of follow the rules and then there’s a quality discussion.
Is it just you running the website?
Yeah, it’s just me. There’s no one else.
Do you do this full-time or do you have other pursuits in life?
I have other pursuits, although this is kind of like a full-time job. I work for a British magazine, which is an events magazine for aviation events. There are a lot of aviation conferences around the world and they produce a magazine for each and it’s usually analysis of markets and things like that. Not in the former Yugoslavia — they’re not very interested in this region — but it’s actually good for me because I learn a lot through it. I don’t know about the U.K. market, for example, or Spain or something like that.
It has helped me as well with my own site and my own aviation knowledge and meeting people from the industry. It was a positive development for me to meet a lot of airport executives from around Europe. I would introduce myself and then my editor would say, “oh he also writes EX-YU Aviation” and they would say “yeah, of course, we know it, we read it all the time.” That was a good feeling.
Do you have any fun anecdotes from your time running the website, any specific moments that jump out as “wow, this is really happening with this thing that I’ve created?”
I remember the first time I saw the website cited in completely mainstream international media, I was really surprised. And I remember in 2014, Delta, the U.S. airline, which is one of the world’s largest, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation. They were against a codeshare agreement between Air Serbia and Etihad Airways to the U.S. market, and in the 60-page document that they submitted, detailing why they’re against it, they cited an article from EX-YU Aviation News. So that was interesting; you don’t expect it.
From a personal point of view, I remember so many times, going on a holiday, especially in the early 2010s, trying to hunt an internet connection to log in to write news or wake up at 6 a.m. because of a time difference. But that’s life. If you’re passionate about what you do, I think you don’t notice it. It’s just when you look back, you think “wow.”
So with the stories you publish, it’s all from you gathering information from industry contacts and a range of other sources?
Yeah, exactly, it’s from various sources. Sometimes it’s aggregated, in which case it’s written in the article if it’s from another source. The rest is mostly from contacts within the industry. A lot of people, you know, call you to tell you what’s happening, what’s going on. You just have to have good contacts everywhere. Of course, they want to stay anonymous, but contacts at airports, airlines, even civil aviation authorities. They all help.
You mentioned the Kosovo market being dominated in part by visiting friends and families. Are there any other factors that make it particularly unique, either with the charter business or anything like that that stands out?
Yes, Kosovo is a very unique market in Europe because it has these leisure charter agencies that sell tickets. They actually charter airlines and aircraft. This exists everywhere, but not to the extent as it exists in Kosovo. You have so many airlines that fly scheduled routes, but you can only buy tickets through tour operators. So they’re not sold through the airlines and it’s a big portion of the traffic there. It’s very unique. I don’t know a market in Europe where that is the case. In the last few years, we see that low-cost airlines are kind of becoming more dominant on the market. I think that over time they will overtake all of these tour operators.
I think the reason is that people feel more safe when they buy through these tour operators. They offer very generous baggage allowance, which is very important for the diaspora if they’re bringing back stuff or taking back things like food. So I think that’s one of the reasons why, but I do think that over time, their dominance will fade and be taken over by low-cost airlines. We already see it. EasyJet is already the biggest airline there; Wizz Air is very big.
And the good thing is that with visa abolishment [in January 2024, visa restrictions for Kosovars traveling to the Schengen Area were lifted], I think that traffic will take off. It’s been the case in all the other countries where the same has happened. We already see it for the statistics through the passenger numbers that it’s taking place.
Yeah, the number of passengers at Prishtina Airport is growing and four new gates have been added this summer. Do you think that the EasyJets and Wizz Airs of the world might overtake the charters because of the ease of booking those tickets online?
Exactly. They’re more accessible. More foreign visitors will start coming to Prishtina and visiting for tourism. They have no clue about these agencies. So they’re going to go through with EasyJet. I mean you can be a legacy carrier [a national airline such as Turkish Airlines or Austrian Airlines that predates liberalization of the commercial aviation industry] as well. Over time, the agencies’ influence will kind of fade.
JAT connected Yugoslavia with points as far as Los Angeles and Sydney. EX-YU Aviation News’ Vintage section contains advertisements from JAT’s global advertising campaign and pictures of booking offices in places like Cairo and New York. Photos courtesy of EX-YU Aviation News.
How do you see the future of commercial aviation in the context of climate change and these anti-flight movements, often in Western Europe, playing out in the ex-Yugoslavia context?
I don’t think green policies are such a major focus in this region. Maybe in Slovenia. But I don’t think that’ll change in the near future. I don’t think people know that much about aviation impacting this area.
I do think that the anger towards the aviation industry in Europe in this respect is misplaced. I think the aviation industry has actually been one of the industries that has done the most to mitigate the impacts of climate change, when you have other industries that do nothing about it. For example, the cruise industry’s ships pollute much more than planes, but nobody’s making an issue of it. So yes, aviation is an issue in terms of the environment, but it has done much more than other industries.
Do you ever come across people, who when you tell them about the website, have no concept of what any of this is or have no understanding of why this is interesting to people, why someone would spend their time on this? What’s your answer to people who say “really, this is your interest?”
I can’t say that I’ve met too many people that have reacted that way. It could be because most people I’m friends with do like aviation [laughs]. But you know, I’m not trying to blow my own horn, but I think the site has been successful. And if you have that behind you, then they don’t question it. You’ve managed to create something that’s relatively successful.
I have had people ask “why don’t you branch out? Why don’t you cover a bigger area? You know you could earn more from ads” or something like that, but I think I really don’t have the drive or the time to cover other regions like Bulgaria and Romania. I don’t have the contacts there to cover it well.
In terms of the site itself, I would love it if I could have one article per week about every different country, but it’s just impossible. Some markets are bigger than others, some are more open to discussing aviation publicly than others. Unfortunately from Kosovo, I don’t have that many articles because it’s a smaller market. There’s less things happening when there’s no national airline. There’s less news being generated. But whenever there is news, I definitely cover and publish it.
Do you have a favorite airport in the region?
Even though I'm from Serbia, I don't cheer when the national airline starts flights here or there. I don't care, to tell you the honest truth.
No, not really. I really don’t have favorite airlines or airports. I’m completely immune to what’s happening in the region. I kind of try to distance myself because I think that’s the best way to write a balanced article. Even though I’m from Serbia, I don’t cheer when the national airline starts flights here or there. I don’t care, to tell you the honest truth.
So you’re not throwing a party for the new Air Serbia route to Guangzhou?!
Yes, exactly [laughs].
I’m curious about the archive section of the website and the idea of Yugonostalgia through the lens of aviation. You touched earlier on how at its peak, JAT was a very successful national airline. Are a lot of those images on the website submitted by readers who want to share in this community? Or do you gather them yourself?
The majority of them are from my uncle, who was the official photographer of Yugoslav Airlines in the 70s and 80s. They had, I think, two photographers who went to all these events, to all the media, promo materials. I have loads of photos and published them because I think the history of the airline is really interesting, but also the entire aviation landscape in Yugoslavia back then was really interesting and really well developed, especially for communist country and an Eastern European country. I think it was quite amazing.
I first published an old photo on the sidebar of the website around, maybe, 10 years ago. It was just supposed to be a static image. It wasn’t supposed to change every week, but I noticed that so many people liked it. And then I said why not just change them around each week and write a bit about the history and it proved really successful and I noticed that there’s so much Yugonostalgia towards that era that it proved really successful.
Popović’s uncle, an aviation photographer in the 1970s and 80s, documented everything from changes in flight attendant wardrobes to a concert by popular singer-songwriter Arsen Dedić on 1979 JAT flight to New York. Photos courtesy of EX-YU Aviation News.
And what about readership, does that hold steady? Or do certain events impact it?
There were a couple of events that increased the readership a lot, and the new readers stuck to it. The first major one was when Air Serbia was launched with Etihad [in 2013, JAT, which was then called JAT Airways and Etihad Airways, an Abu Dhabi-based carrier, agreed to rebrand JAT Airways as Air Serbia, with Etihad acquiring 49% ownership and management rights for five years]. Another was when Adria went bankrupt [Adria Airways, Slovenia’s flag carrier, declared bankruptcy in 2019]. That was huge.
The third one was Covid. I thought that during that time, readership would crash, but it was actually the complete opposite. It doubled during that period, even though there were much fewer comments. I think it was because people were kind of completely disillusioned so they didn’t want to participate in discussions. But the readership really grew and the important thing is that each time those readers stuck after the events occurred. The readership now is quite stable.
Of course, I see when there’s something really interesting or important, it grows, but it’s mostly for a day or two then it goes back to normal. It’s not seasonal; it’s steady throughout the year. The only thing I noticed is on weekends, it’s a bit lower than usual, which is I think because a lot of people visit the site from their workplace when they get to work. But even on weekends now, there was a much bigger disparity maybe a couple of years ago, even on weekends, sometimes it’s even more than doing a work day. It just depends on what’s the news.
I know which news is going to be popular, what’s going to be read. Unfortunately from some countries, I know that just not a lot of people are interested and it’s going to be a lower readership, but you’re prepared for that and you know exactly what’s going to be popular. I guess that’s because after 16 years, you realize what people like. There are some markets that more people from other markets are also interested in; it’s not just locals who want to read about it. And then there’s also some news that people, globally, want to read about.
What’s an example of a story where you know that the readership will be especially high? Is there a general topic or a theme that is especially attractive?
Generally, new routes are extremely popular. Whatever the new route is, it’s always going to be highly read. People are really interested in it. There’s also a lot of readership of news where different markets within the former Yugoslavia interlink. An article related to several markets is generally really well read. So, for example, I have this monthly article about what the capacity levels at each airport are going to be for the next month. That’s really popular each month, because everyone wants to read about it for their own market.
And also, all controversial ones where you know that people are going to have a very strong opinion one way or another usually do really well.
What sort of controversy are we talking about here?
There was this article just the other day about, again, Air Serbia. Croatia decided to file a complaint about a codeshare agreement between Air Serbia and JetBlue [which would allow U.S. airline JetBlue to sell seats on Air Serbia flights between Serbia and Croatia and Serbia and Italy] and I knew straight away that this would be really read. It was read more than the feature article of the day, and at some point I had to close the comments because it was getting a bit out of hand.
The comments really do amaze me sometimes…
Yes [laughs].
This article has been edited for length and clarity. The conversation was conducted in English.
Feature image: Image courtesy of EX-YU Aviation News.
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- This story was originally written in English.