Air Serbia and Croatia Airlines are among Europe’s top sixty largest carriers this summer season based on available seat capacity, which is considered a key industry metric. During the 2025 summer season, Air Serbia is the continent’s 49th largest airline, while Croatia Airlines takes 58th position. The Serbian carrier ranks just behind airBaltic, Icelandair and Air Dolomiti, but ahead of the likes of Discover Airlines, Nordwind Airlines and TUIfly. On the other hand, its Croatian counterpart positioned itself behind Aeroitalia, Utair and Luxair but ahead of Air Corsica, TAROM and KM Malta Airlines. If non-European carriers are taken into consideration as well, the Middle East’s Big Three – Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways – all have more capacity on the European market than the two national carriers from the former Yugoslavia, while the likes of Flydubai, China Southern Airlines, Saudia, Royal Air Maroc and Nouvelair are ahead of Croatia Airlines.

Since the pandemic, Air Serbia has pursued aggressive fleet and network expansion, which has resulted in the airline lifting its summer capacity by 55.5% on 2019. Compared to six years ago, the Serbian carrier has an additional 1.3 million seats on the market. By contrast, Croatia Airlines has maintained a more conservative growth trajectory. This summer it will surpass its capacity levels from 2019 by 6.3% with an additional 132.000 seats. Speaking at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit in Athens last week, Air Serbia’s CEO, Jiri Marek, said, “We took the risk. One was with strategy, the other with internal resources. We used Covid as an opportunity to grow and insourced eighteen aircraft in the last three years and launched forty destinations. We also did not go down the path of hiring a consultancy firm for a post-Covid strategy but upgraded the next generation of our managers to the senior level to start making decisions”.

This summer, Ryanair remains the continent’s largest airline with over 142.2 million seats. It is followed by easyJet, Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, Wizz Air, British Airways, Air France, Pegasus Airlines, Aeroflot, Vueling and KLM. Emirates is the continent’s largest foreign carrier this summer with over 14.1 million seats on the market. It is followed by United Airlines, Delta, Qatar Airways, American Airlines and Air Canada. Air Montenegro is among Europe’s smallest airlines, just behind the likes of Tus Airways, Animawings and Danish Air Transport.