The airline Virgin Atlantic wants to concentrate more on the markets in Croatia and Serbia in the future. This is intended to further strengthen the London-Heathrow hub. The feeder flights are to be operated by Croatia Airlines, Air Serbia and other codeshare partners, for example.

“Croatia and Serbia are both underserved with direct connections to North America. We are focused on maximizing Virgin Atlantic's existing interline partnerships and leveraging our strong commercial relationships. We're excited to get started,” said Aiden Walsh of Virgin-GSA Discover the World.

The project is not purely coincidental, because the market share of passengers who book with Virgin Atlantic from/to Croatia or Serbia on transatlantic routes is negligible. The Lufthansa Group is much more strongly represented in this segment and British Airways also manages to get more transfer passengers. So they want a piece of the pie and are also eyeing United Airlines' seasonal Dubrovnik-Newark service. One hopes that one or the other passenger can be snatched away by changing trains at Heathrow.

Virgin Atlantic is currently ruling out taking long-haul flights from Serbia or Croatia itself. For reasons of aviation law, this would also be a complicated project. The aim of focusing on Serbia and Croatia is that, with the help of partners, more passengers can be transported via London Heathrow.

As far as Air Serbia is concerned, the possible cooperation should be very interesting, because this carrier is currently building its own North America network. It remains to be seen to what extent this will compete with or complement a cooperation with Virgin Atlantic. Croatia Airlines does not have a long-haul fleet and may well be interested in extra income in the form of feeder services to London Heathrow. However, one is also a cooperation partner of Lufthansa and it cannot be assumed that the latter should be particularly pleased about cooperation with the competition.