Austrian Airlines focus on leisure destinations, facing stiff neck competition from low-cost cost carriers

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

In 2022, Austrian Airlines is all geared-up to target leisure destinations as it admits strong competition from low-cost cost carriers at Vienna airport.

While declaring its summer 2022 schedule on November 9th, the Lufthansa Group airline says “tourist destinations will… dominate the 2022 summer flight schedule”, with Greece, southern Italy and the Balearic Islands to obtain significant capacity.

The Star Alliance carrier will fly three flights on a daily basis to Palma de Mallorca and daily services to Sicily among its specific route announcements.

Noting that on European routes, it will deploy 10 more aircrafts than what it did in this year’s summer; Austrian describes its plans as a “decisive stand against the expected increase in competition from low-cost airlines”.

Austrian faces stiff neck competition from the likes of Ryanair at Vienna, with the Irish group in September declaring about its “largest ever” flying program from the capital city, marking 90 routes served by 19 aircraft based at the airport.

During the Covid-19 crisis, Wizz Air attempted to double up its footprint across Europe– also has a base at Vienna, ranked third behind Austrian and Ryanair for capacity in November 2021, according to Cirium schedules data.

Also, at Vienna, Austrian’s stablemate Eurowings has a base, while EasyJet’s post-Brexit European operation is registered in Austria, but its presence at Vienna is not that distinct.

In the summers of 2022, Austrian, a “premium carrier”, says it will fly to “almost” 110 destinations, with a weekly frequency of “around 1,200 flights”.

Vienna airport in pre-pandemic times saw a huge rush of budget operators, prompting Wizz Air chief executive Jozsef Varadi to characterise the market as “a bit of a bloodbath”

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