On September 28, the Supervisory Board of Lufthansa AG approved large-scale investments in the Austrian Airlines fleet. The investments will serve as the basis for the first strategy package of Austrian Airlines entitled “Next Level Austrian“ at the Vienna flight hub as well as for the acquisition of one additional intercontinental and two additional continental aircraft.
These three planes alone represent an investment value of more than EUR 100 million. As a result, more than 230 additional jobs will be created at the Vienna hub. The two Airbus A320 jets will already serve to enlarge the Austrian Airlines fleet this year, whereas the Boeing 777 aircraft is expected to first be deployed starting with the summer flight schedule 2018.
In the next step, Austrian is to make a decision regarding the modernisation of the long-haul fleet. In this case the investment will be clearly higher than EUR 1 billion.
The two additional Airbus A320 aircraft from Lufthansa will mainly be deployed for bilateral German-Austrian flight traffic. In contrast, the wide-body jet in the package approved this week will be used for new direct flight connections from Vienna. Destinations in Asia as well as America and Africa appear to be of particular interest. Recently, the Austrian flag carrier added new nonstop flights to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Los Angeles to its flight schedule.
