Star Alliance member, Austrian Airlines is to debut on the US west coast next year with the launch of a new service between Vienna and Los Angeles. The seasonal flight will operate on an up to six times weekly schedule from April 10, 2017 and will be flown using a Boeing 777.
The airline anticipates the flight will support the increasing demand between the two cities, but believes that transfer traffic will dominate the flows and account for more than two-thirds of the total traffic with connections via its Vienna International Airport hub.
“After Chicago, Newark and Miami, L.A. is now the fourth new flight destination and the so far biggest leap into the USA. We will fly to the West Coast with our existing fleet and are already very excited about this new venture,” said Andreas Otto, chief commercial officer, Austrian Airlines.
As of the summer 2017 schedule, Austrian Airlines will offer up to 44 weekly flights to North America. This will encompass up to five times per week to Miami, a maximum of six weekly flights each to Los Angeles and Toronto, and up to one flight each day to Washington and Chicago.
It will also offer 13 weekly flights to New York (Newark and JFK), albeit flight schedules on four of the six weekly flights to JFK will be switched to an afternoon operation from March 27, 2017 to facilitate the operational needs of the new Los Angeles offer.
Thanks to the new flight times, customers will have the advantage of being able to choose between a morning flight to Newark and an afternoon flight to New York JFK, and thus the opportunity to travel to New York at different times of day.
More than 5,500 O&D passengers a day are currently flying between points across Europe and Los Angeles and Austrian Airlines already offers links through its partner carriers Lufthansa and Swiss International Air Lines via Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich.
Over 22,000 two-way passengers flew between Vienna and Los Angeles in the first six months of this year, according to the AirVision Market Intelligence tool from Sabre Airline Solutions, approximately 60 PPDEW and a sizeable O&D market to expand with connecting traffic. The largest share of these passengers are currently flying with British Airways via London Heathrow (22.1%), with Austrian holding just a 4.2% share of the demand.
Related Content
