A Moscow-bound Air Serbia flight got most of the way there before it was ordered back to Belgrade — because a former Serbian intelligence chief apparently never went through security in the first place.
Flight JU134 left Belgrade at 6:48 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3. The Airbus A320 was already over southern Lithuania when it turned around, landing back where it started at 9:56 p.m. That's over three hours of flying to end up at the departure gate. The plane eventually reached Moscow about seven hours late.
The problem: Aleksandar Vulin — Serbia's ex-intelligence chief, and previously defence and interior minister and deputy prime minister — was escorted through the security area by an intelligence agency officer and skipped screening. Police say he set off an alarm and never got the required secondary inspection. Once prosecutors heard about it, the aircraft was recalled. Everyone deplaned, luggage and all, went through security again, and a fresh crew took over because the original pilots had run out of legal duty time. Passengers reboarded shortly before 2 a.m.
Vulin sees it differently. He claims he slept the whole flight, woke up back in Belgrade with police nearby, and passed all checks with nothing found. He frames the whole episode as political theatre aimed at impressing Serbia's incoming leadership, following the October 25 election in which his ally President Aleksandar Vučić's side lost. He says he was headed to Moscow to negotiate an extension of Serbia's gas deal with Russia — and he's no stranger to controversy, having been sanctioned by the United States in 2023 over alleged corruption and support for Russian influence operations.
The logistics of the decision are interesting in themselves. Returning to Belgrade puts the passenger, the screeners and the security records under one authority — messy enough. Coordinating an unscheduled security re-screen with a foreign airport mid-route, without the airline's own staff on the ground, would have been harder and more embarrassing for everyone involved.
Belgrade's Third Basic Public Prosecutor's Office is now pressing the airport's security director for answers: who ordered the turnaround, what assessment justified it, whether departure procedures were breached, and who signed off on the flight leaving again. For the passengers, the takeaway is unwelcome but simple — one person's shortcut through security can cost a full plane a seven-hour delay.
Returning a flight over an unscreened passenger isn't unheard of; US carriers have done it too, though usually before the aircraft gets this far from home.
