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Klagenfurt: Carinthian Tourism wants to establish incoming charters

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The number of scheduled flights at Klagenfurt Airport is currently extremely limited. There is no prospect of any improvement in the short term, but the management team around Maximilian Wildt is currently working hard to persuade Eurowings to resume Cologne/Bonn flights. Another German destination that could be served in summer 2025 is also under negotiation.

If the plans announced by the former majority owner Lilihill had been implemented, Klagenfurt would have had its own virtual airline. Liliair wanted to fly to Hamburg, Munich, Cologne/Bonn and Frankfurt am Main, among other places. However, those responsible at the time were never able to give a conclusive answer as to how they would manage to ensure that passengers of the virtual carrier could book through tickets with Lufthansa connections. It is well known that the crane is extremely selective in its choice of partners and rarely, if ever, gets involved with new constructions outside of its own group or the Star Alliance. The South Tyrolean Skyalps, which was briefly considered Liliair's operating carrier, also had to feel this. The wet lease contract from Austrian Airlines went to Braathens and not Skyalps. Negotiations with Lufthansa - for ACMI services from Friedrichshafen, Linz and Innsbruck - also came to nothing.

Klagenfurt currently has only two carriers, Austrian Airlines and Ryanair, that regularly fly to the airport. It is an open secret that Carinthian tourism is suffering greatly from the loss of the Cologne/Bonn route, which was most recently served by Eurowings. The management team around Maximilian Wildt is trying to persuade the Lufthansa subsidiary to return to the Carinthian capital. There are no binding commitments yet. Eurowings has not made any public statement on this issue.

Austrian Airlines temporarily reduces Vienna route

There will be a temporary change on the Vienna route in the 2025 winter flight schedule. At the beginning of 2025, Austrian Airlines will reduce the number of weekly flights on this route to nine. Instead of the Braathens wet lease aircraft, the airline will temporarily use its own Embraer 195. According to Austrian Airlines, the ACMI partner will then fly again with ATR72-600s. The reason behind this is that demand is traditionally much lower in the affected winter months. In any case, it will not be a permanent reduction or change. In general, the flight schedule, which was only adjusted in this summer flight schedule period and includes the Braathens wet lease, has been very well received.

The cooperation between Austrian Airlines and the Swedish regional airline appears to be designed for the long term. Certain conditions are being created at Klagenfurt Airport, as a kind of mini-hangar is being built to facilitate line maintenance of the ATR72-600. Braathens has stationed not only flight crew but also technicians in Klagenfurt. This is primarily due to the fact that turboprop aircraft generally require "daily love from technicians" in order to keep the failure rate as low as possible. Braathens' approach is therefore standard in the industry and is no different from other operators of this type of aircraft.

Tourism wants to set up incoming charters

It is possible that a de Havilland Dash 72-600 from Skyalps could join the stationed ATR8-400, as intensive discussions are currently underway about flights to Hanover and some destinations in Scandinavia. However, these are not classic scheduled flights, but a project by Carinthian tourism officials, who want to attract more incoming guests as part of a joint effort. Peter Peschel, managing director of the Wörthersee region, confirmed to the "Kleine Zeitung" that the aim is to include these charter flights in the 2024 summer flight schedule. KBV boss Martin Payer wants to persuade other local tourism associations and hoteliers to join the project, which he describes as a "flagship project". In any case, the airport is not the potential client for the possible charter flights. Fixed contracts with Skyalps or another carrier have not yet been signed by Carinthian tourism. It will therefore be necessary to wait and see how the plans develop.

After several years of being closed, some construction work is currently underway at Klagenfurt Airport. For example, some renovation work is being carried out on the terminal. There will also be a separate General Aviation Terminal in the future, which will be set up in an existing building. Managing Director Maximilian Wildt explained this step to Aviation.Direct by saying that general aviation has developed very strongly and has become a very important mainstay for the airport. At the moment, there are significantly more flight movements at Carinthia Airport that can be classified as general aviation or business aviation than commercial scheduled and charter flights.

Handling subsidiary merges into airport company

In the area of ​​finances, Klagenfurt Airport has been able to achieve savings of around 1,8 million euros per year since the state of Carinthia and the city of Klagenfurt exercised the call option. The shareholders and managing director Wildt have put a number of things to the test. For example, the handling subsidiary Aviserve has been merged into the airport company so that these services are again offered directly from the airport. The company has also disposed of numerous luxury cars that were said to have been used by previous management. Viewed individually, the savings are said to be peanuts, but in total the costs could have been reduced by millions of euros.

This was absolutely necessary, because if the state of Carinthia and the city of Klagenfurt had not stepped in last year, Klagenfurt Airport might even have had to file for bankruptcy. Without the capital increase, which was financed solely by the public sector, the employees would have been left without salaries, because even these financial resources were no longer available.

Tourism cooperation has been a long time coming

In contrast to Innsbruck and Salzburg, Klagenfurt Airport has not yet been able to establish itself as a popular landing spot for winter sports enthusiasts. This is primarily because hoteliers, lift operators and regional tourism associations have not yet formed an effective alliance. Their own interests have been too different. But in Carinthia, it is now clear that the incoming guests who landed in Klagenfurt with Eurowings, among others, are missing. Even for regular customers, it seems that there is no alternative to taking long train or car journeys in order to be able to spend their holidays in Carinthia, either in summer or winter.

Now they are trying to create a kind of alliance that has not been achieved for decades. As a kind of "product" of this, the charter flights from Scandinavia and Hanover mentioned above are to follow in the summer of 2025. If they are successful, it is to be expected that the focus in the 2025/26 winter flight schedule could be on incoming winter sports enthusiasts. They will have to face tough competition not only internationally, but also within Austria, because unlike Carinthia, Tyrol and Salzburg have long been strong in the area of ​​winter sports enthusiasts who come to the country by plane. Local tourism still has a lot of work to do, especially in the area of ​​ground mobility, i.e. so that holidaymakers can get from the airport to the hotel or to the ski areas. Not every winter sports enthusiast wants to afford an expensive rental car.

Klagenfurt could benefit from high Ljubljana fees

For 2024, Klagenfurt Airport is currently aiming for between 170.000 and 180.000 passengers, as Wildt told the "Kleine Zeitung". Originally, it was assumed that there would be around 200.000 travelers. According to the current state of affairs, the scheduled destinations in winter will be London-Stansted, served by Ryanair, and Vienna, offered by Austrian Airlines. For the summer of 2025, management is also hoping for additional destinations for the Irish low-cost airline and refers to an agreement that was concluded with the carrier in this regard. Whether Ryanair will adhere to this is another matter.

The busy airline is not the only low-cost carrier that has at least set its sights on Klagenfurt. The high fees at Ljubljana Airport, which is operated by Fraport, have led to numerous routes being reduced or cancelled. Some providers have also withdrawn completely from this segment. Airline circles say that they are now at least considering flying from Klagenfurt as an alternative to the Slovenian capital. But nothing is set in stone yet and, as is well known, everyone talks to everyone in this industry, but often it remains just talks and no deals are made.

For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that Klagenfurt Airport is not exactly a cheap airport. The fees are also high, although significantly lower than in Ljubljana. In Austria, these are not set by management according to the criteria of a free market economy, but there is a separate law for this. These must be calculated on the basis of the previous year's passenger numbers and then approved by the Ministry of Transport. This means that the managers' scope for any start-up aid in the form of discounts ("incentive programs") is kept within very narrow limits for a limited period of time. This expressly applies not only to Klagenfurt, but to all Austrian commercial airports.

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