Serbia's Deputy PM Aleksandar Vučić and UAE national airline Etihad CEO James Hogan signed a strategic partnership agreement in Belgrade on August 1st, 2013.

The agreement also rebranded Serbian national carrier Jat Airways into Air Serbia.

Deputy PM Aleksandar Vučić stated that the company Air would make Serbia the leader in the region by the end of the year and the most powerful in a radius of countries with nearly 100 million people.

"This is a great and important day for Serbia, because an airplane with the logo of the Serbian company will go onto the take-off runway, while the deal with Etihad will enable a technological and business environment in which 30 million passengers will get a reliable airline to important destinations in the world," Deputy PM remarked.

Serbia has to justify the confidence placed in it, because work will be measured by the criteria of the most developed part of the world from this day on, he noted.

The new destinations to Air Serbia’s network are Abu Dhabi; Banja Luka, Beirut, Bucharest, Budapest; Cairo; Kiev, Ljubljana, Prague, Sofia, Varna and Warsaw.