Game over for Srdjan Radovanović

Radovanović’s time to fly

The CEO of Jat Airways, Srdjan Radovanović, is expected to be ousted from his post by the end of next week after a damaging front page article in the national newspaper, “Politika”, reported on the shortcomings of his management. Jat’s Finance Department, which was restructured by Radovanović earlier this year, has not been running the airline’s books properly and has failed to pay its debt to Jat Catering, Jat Tehnika, Lufthansa Tehnik, the water supply company and the electricity supply company. It also owes money to various media outlets for the airline’s recent advertisement campaigns. Furthermore, Jat owes money to the Jordanian aviation directorate for unpaid overfly fees and to its ground handling agent in Dubai.

Employees at the airline are anticipating Radovanović’s exit. The blog has recently received e-mails from several disgruntled employees revealing the inner workings of Srdjan Radovanović’s team, which is now pushing for a disastrous ticket price restructuring plan which will hurt the airline and all its international cooperation agreements. Furthermore, Radovanović decided to sell Jat’s headquarters in Belgrade earlier this year and the entire company is now moving to derelict buildings near the airport. This is in line with the CEO’s policy of closing down the airline’s international offices which has had a drastic impact on Jat’s sales figures in the past 2 months.

In order for Radovanović to be removed from his post, Jat’s management board (which is at war with the current CEO) has to meet. It is believed that they will be doing so next week and were waiting to get the all clear from the Serbian Government, which appointed Radovanović as Jat CEO in the first place.

Srdjan Radovanović, a lawyer by profession, was appointed as the airline’s CEO in 2009, despite the fact that he has never worked in the airline industry. The similarly disastrous management strategy was led by the previous CEO, Saša Vlaisavljević, who worked as a ground handler at Belgrade Airport before being appointed as the head of Jat. After he was driven out of the company he became the city manager of Belgrade only to be fired 2 weeks later.