Aeroput

Aeroput (Аеропут) 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" (Society for Air Traffic "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; Yugoslav Air Transport) and still flies today as the Serbian national air carrier under the name Air Serbia. 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.