НАД ДУНАВОМ И КАРПАТИМА: ВАЗДУШНИ САОБРАЋАЈ ИЗМЕЂУ ЈУГОСЛАВИЈЕ И РУМУНИЈЕ У XX ВЕКУ
ABOVE THE DANUBE ANDTHE CARPATHIANS: AIRTRANSPORT BETWEEN YUGOSLAVIA AND ROMANIAIN THE 20TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: Air transport between Yugoslavia and Romania was established in 1923. At that time, the French-Romanian company CFRNA launched a route between Belgrade and Bucharest as part of its Trans-European route from Paris to Istanbul. This was also the first service with regular night flights in the history of civil aviation. A convention on air transport between Yugoslavia and Romania was only signed in 1934. Yugoslav and Romanian aviation companies, Aeroput and LARES, introduced flights between Belgrade and Bucharest in 1938. They connected the two capitals with Zagreb, Venice, and Milan in cooperation with the Italian airline ALI. The Italian Ala Littoria flew from Rome to Belgrade and Bucharest. Services ceased at the end of the flying season in 1940, and they were renewed after the Second World War. In 1947, a new agreement on air transport was signed. Two airlines, YUSTA and TARS, started flying between Belgrade and Bucharest. The service was short-lived due to a lack of passengers and the worsening of relations between Yugoslavia and the rest of the Eastern Bloc. In 1956, as relations were normalized, a new agreement on air transport was signed and amended in 1964. The Romanian national airline TAROM then operated flights between the two nations’ capitals until 1966. Yugoslavia’s national airline, JAT, opened its service to Bucharest in 1968 but closed it in 1969 due to low passenger demand. TAROM restarted its flights in 1973. Except for 1975, when the Zagreb-based airline Pan Adria connected Bucharest with Zagreb as agreed with JAT, TAROM remained the only air carrier flying between Yugoslavia and Romania for the rest of the socialist period. This demonstrates that, despite good Yugoslav-Romanian relations, economic reasoning prevailed when it came to maintaining an unprofitable route. Flights were terminated from 1992 to 1994 due to international sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia and again in 1999 due to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Romania helped JAT survive those times. First, TAROM provided flights from Timisoara to the rest of Europe for JAT passengers. They also accommodated evacuated JAT airplanes during the bombing. Flights by both Yugoslav/Serbian and Romanian carriers between Belgrade and Bucharest have been operating normally ever since.

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