Austrian Airlines to Close Mumbai Route and Redeploy 767 in Existing Markets

Austrian Airlines has confirmed it will close its Vienna – Mumbai route from the start of the Northern Summer 2012 schedule at the end of March, although the carrier will continue to serve the Indian market with a six times weekly flight to New Delhi. The Star Alliance member currently offers five flights per week between Vienna and Mumbai, a market of around 16,000 O&D passengers a year.

According to Austrian, the Boeing 767 aircraft currently allocated to the Mumbai route will now be used to boost capacity on flights to Tel Aviv and Tehran, replacing smaller narrowbodied jets on some of the flights. The European carrier faces competition on both of these routes; from El Al Israel Airlines and Niki on the link to Tel Aviv and from Iran Air on its services to Tehran.

The latest network changes are part of Austrian’s 2012 Work Programme, a revised corporate strategy to meet the current operating environment. “From the summer of 2012 onwards, we shall be sharply increasing flight frequencies to our core markets in Eastern Europe, and building up capacity to the Middle East in a trade-off with the destination of Mumbai,” said Andreas Bierwirth, a member of Austrian Airlines’ Executive Board.

Other notable changes include a reinforcement of the carrier’s long-term Focus East plan and growth in some western European and domestic markets and, of course, its previously announced plan to resume flights to Tripoli, Libya. The airline will increase links from Vienna to Bucharest, Romania from three to five a week and to Sofia, Bulgaria from four to five a week, following up on its winter capacity growth to Belgrade, Serbia. This summer it will also take over the operation of an additional Vienna – London rotation from bmi, increasing its own schedule to four flights per day, while a third rotation per day will be added between Vienna and Barcelona from March 25, 2012. However, to facilitate its network changes the airline will drop its evening rotation between Vienna and Stockholm this summer, cutting capacity from four to three flights a day.

In the domestic market Austrian will introduce an extra morning rotation between Klagenfurt and Vienna from March 1, 2012, increasing the route to five times daily, while the fourth daily flight introduced between Vienna and Linz during the winter schedule will be maintained through the summer.