Originally Posted by
ATNotts
Do Eurowings interline with Austrian at Vienna? If so, perhaps their reason for being on the route is more to do with that, than shipping weekend breakers to eat exorbitantly priced Apfel Strudel and coffee in the Austrian capital.
Yes they do. BHX-VIE has OS codeshare flight numbers. I flew TXL-VIE-BHX booked on Expedia, ticketed on an OS ticket and was through checked at TXL for both sectors (TXL-VIE was OS, VIE-BHX of course EW). This partly explains why they have stayed on the route for so long with such variable loads (my flight on 26th Dec was just over half full).
Will be interesting to see how Lauda Motion do as it will only really suit P2P traffic unless they also offer through ticketed connections? They do operate to a fair few destinations from VIE. We all know LF's need to be high year round for a true LCC carrier to stay on a route and that's without thinking about yield. We can only assume Lauda Motion have done their homework.
Flight times suggest they are not going for the traditional weekend break market as flights are Tues/Thurs/Sat. VIE is a big land and air transport hub and it's easy to get to a lot of cities by train (both in Austria and other countries), of course a huge amount of Danube cruises depart from VIE as well so there's a lot more to the city than just being a weekend break!