Vienna Airport has confirmed its attendance at this year’s World Routes network development forum in Durban, South Africa last month has helped it secure “numerous new flight offerings” for the summer 2016 schedule. The airport had joined forces with the Vienna Tourist Board to take a chalet at the event to promote the market potential of Vienna as a tourist destination.

Numerous new flights from Vienna have already been published for the summer 2016 schedule including expanded offerings from based carrier, Austrian Airlines, as well as NIKI, SunExpress, Transavia and Vueling. The airport has also attracted the return of two seasonal operators in the form of Aegean Airlines and Europe Airpost, the latter soon to be rebranded as ASL Airlines.

“The World Routes Conference, one of the most important international trade events in the airline industry, was held recently. Vienna Airport returned from this meeting with numerous new flight offerings. Various new flight connections and frequency increases are already known with respect to the 2016 summer timetable“, said Julian Jäger, chief operating officer and member of the management board at the airport.

“The World Routes Conference, one of the most important international trade events in the airline industry, was held recently. Vienna Airport returned from this meeting with numerous new flight offerings.”

Julian Jäger
Chief Operating Officer, Vienna Airport

The airport confirms that eight airlines have announced new flight services for the 2016 summer schedule including a new long-haul route into China from national carrier Austrian Airlines. This flight to Shanghai will operate on a five times weekly basis from April 2016, increasing to a daily offering from May 2016. Austrian will also introduce a weekly link from Vienna to Bari from May 26, 2016.

Low-fare carrier easyJet will add eight weekly frequencies in the summer schedule to the new routes that will be launched this winter. This will see it operate up to seven flights per week to Amsterdam in the future, along with three weekly flights to Edinburgh, six times each week to Berlin Schönefeld and four times weekly to London Luton.

Elsewhere, local carrier NIKI will add Faro, Portugal to its existing flight programme as of March 2016 as well as up to two weekly flights to Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia from May 2016. Transavia will expand its flight service to Rotterdam in the Netherlands beginning at the end of March 2016 with up to eleven weekly flights, while Vueling will launch a service to Paris Charles de Gaulle, operating five time weekly from May 4, 2016.

Meanwhile, Europe Airpost will resume its bi-weekly seasonal flight connections to the French cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse in April 2016 and the Greek carrier Aegean Airlines next summer will again offer a twice weekly flight service to Heraklion from May to September 2016. Turkish carrier SunExpress is also expanding its flight frequencies by adding two flights to Antalya to a total of 14 flights per week, rising to 16 weekly flights from June to September 2016.

This schedule will also see the first summer offering from German carrier Eurowings which is establishing a new base at Vienna Airport from this November. Although it has not formally confirmed its summer offering it had previously stated that two of its four initial routes – London Stansted and Rome – would be served on a year-round basis.

The integration of Austria’s eastern neighbours into the European Union in recent years has helped Vienna Airport grow as it has expanded its catchment, while also serving as a gateway into the dynamic regions of Slovakia, Western Hungary and the Southern Czech Republic.

The airport has just recorded its busiest ever month in its long history handling 2,386,256 passengers in August 2015, up 4.8 per cent on the same month last year. This record performance followed the airport’s busiest ever single day for traffic on July 31, 2015 and has been buoyed by passenger growth to Eastern and Western Europe, Middle East, Far East and North America and a notable 5.9 per cent rise in transfer traffic.

Our analysis of OAG Schedules Analyser data shows that the airport boosted departure capacity by 35.2 per cent between 2005 and 2014, an average annual growth of 3.9 per cent. According to published schedules for the remainder of the year, capacity is forecasted to grow 2.0 per cent in 2015 with the number of points served directly from Vienna Airport increasing from 177 to 186 destinations.