Aeroput () was an airline and flag carrier of Yugoslavia from 1927 until 1948.
Society for Air traffic AD Aeroput was the first Serbian company for civil air traffic, which was founded on 17 June 1927 as Društvo za Vazdušni Saobraćaj "Aeroput" (), in the palace of the Adriatic-Danube Bank in Belgrade. Aeroput was the national carrier of the Kingdom of SHS, and then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Aeroput was among the first civilian aircraft carriers, being the 10th airline company founded in Europe and the 21st in the world. The airline ceased to exist during World War II in Yugoslavia, but was renewed after the war under the new name Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (abbreviated JAT; ) and still flies today as the Serbian national air carrier under the name Air Serbia.
The beginning and development of the Serbian civil aviation
On 13 February 1913, king Peter I of Serbia adopted the Regulation of the transportation system of devices which run in the air, which made Kingdom of Serbia joining the modern air traffic. It was the fifth country in the world (after Germany, England, France and Austria-Hungary), which regulated legal norms of the air operations. For the Kingdom of Serbia, it was a defense mechanism from Austro-Hungarian planes, which had been flying over Serbian territory, without any permission, since November 1912, as Austro-Hungarian Empire was putting pressure on Serbia to withdraw from the coast of the Adriatic Sea, where Serb units were stationed after the victory over the Turks in the First Balkan War.
The first civilian aircraft to fly over Serbia before the end of World War I postal service flights carrying mail. In cooperation with the Postal and Telegraphic Department several flights were organized in Thessaloniki, where pilots of the First Serbian Squadron, AP 521, carried mail between Skopje and Thessaloniki. When the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established in December 1918, two-seaters Breguet 14 flew a regular route from Novi Sad through Belgrade and Niš to Skopje almost daily. After that, a postal air service from Novi Sad and Belgrade to Sarajevo, Mostar and Zagreb was established. Passenger transport began in 1919.
Before an airport in Bežanija suburb of Belgrade was built, a temporary solution was found in an airfield in the village of Jabuka near Pančevo. The airfield included a 500 by 500 meters grass field by the side of the road, that was used for grazing livestock, except for the brief periods when the airplanes were landing or taking off, as was the case in Prague and other cities. First flight landed at this impromptu airport on 25 March 1919, operating a Blériot-SPAD S.46 Berline biplane. The location of this airfield was not convenient for passengers, since, in absence of a bridge over the Danube, the travel by ship to Belgrade often lasted longer than the air travel from Budapest or Bucharest.
The first international route that passed through the territory of the Kingdom of SHS was opened by Compagnie Franco-Roumaine. In order to compete with the Orient Express train line, which was for a long time the fastest link between Western Europe and the Middle East, this company introduced world's first regular night flights on the Belgrade-Bucharest route. A three-engine Caudron C.61 took off from Bucharest at 4.00 am and landed in Pančevo at 9.00 am, on 9 September 1923. That same year, the construction of the airport along the road to Bežanija began.
Establishment of Aeroput
In a conference held on 6 February 1926 by the initiative of Serbian Aero-Club the rules of air traffic were created, and all participants become the founders of the new airline company, Aeroput. The rules were approved on 13 March by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The company was registered on the Belgrade stock market. However, the registration of shares went below expectations and it became clear that the company needed assistance in cash and goods from the state. This agreement was signed on 25 January 1927, but subscription of shares was still low. The planned and required 24,000 shares (i.e. the then six million dinars required to purchase aircraft) by the end of March 1927, there were subscribed and paid only about 10% of the shares, which, in accordance with the law of joint stock companies, threatened Aeroput to be abolished.