Austria's regional airports are in crisis. In addition to Klagenfurt and Linz, the perennial favorites of recent years, a third player has now suddenly become a cause for concern, something previously considered almost unimaginable: Innsbruck Airport! An analysis by Andreas Knoll.

The Frankfurt connection has been cut, and Tyrolean businesses are furious. This is understandable, given that Tyrol is considered the number one federal state in terms of tourism and the associated number of overnight stays, especially in winter.

But why is it that so few people are completely satisfied with Vienna as their capital city hub?

Who is (still) connected to Vienna Airport?

Austria's capital airport is a key hub between Western and Eastern Europe and, in its current summer schedule, offers non-stop passenger flights to 204 destinations in 62 countries (source: FlightConnections.com). It is also the home airport of Austrian Airlines.

The Austrian federal state airports Thank you, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck These are the last three Austrian Airlines flights to Vienna that offer daily connections. Linz Airport in Upper Austria lost its connection in 2018, while the last Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna took off from Salzburg in 2020 and has never been rescheduled since.

• Innsbruck – Vienna twice daily
• Klagenfurt – Vienna twice daily
• Graz – Vienna 2 to 3 times daily

What are the current direct destinations that can be reached with a transfer in Vienna?

Codeshare partner of Austrian Airlines

To offer passengers an even more comprehensive range of worldwide destinations and departure times, airlines also cooperate with so-called codeshare partners. These are airlines with whom they have agreements for the shared use of flight capacity. In the case of Austrian Airlines, there are currently 30 partners (see image), although there are currently no flights operating in Ukraine and ÖBB is a railway company.

As a passenger, you book with Austrian Airlines as usual, but the flight itself is then operated entirely or partially by the partner airline.

For example, a flight from Vienna to Las Vegas: Since Austrian Airlines doesn't offer direct flights, partner airline United Airlines still offers the option of reaching your destination with a single ticket. The first flight is from Vienna to Chicago with Austrian Airlines, and after a transfer to Las Vegas, it's United Airlines.

Codeshare flights offer advantages for airlines: The marketing airline can expand its route network without offering its own flights, thus becoming more attractive to passengers. The operating airline benefits from higher booking numbers and better utilization of its flights.

What does this mean for the airports in Graz, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck?

Ultimately, the system remains the same: the first flight goes to Vienna, then a transfer must be made at another major hub airport, which often costs a lot of time and stress. As described in the previous example, the flight from a regional airport would look like this: Klagenfurt – Vienna – Chicago – Las Vegas

Furthermore, the connecting flight to Vienna limits you to Austrian destinations (+including its codeshare partners).

It's not possible to continue your flight directly after your Vienna flight, for example, with a Ryanair flight. Due to the lack of a codeshare partnership in this case, you'll first have to book your ticket separately, second, check in your luggage again after arriving in Vienna, and third, go through the entire security check again.

Why does every Austrian regional airport want a connection to Frankfurt?

As the saying goes: "If you have Frankfurt, you have the whole world. If you have Vienna, you only have half the world."

With a single transfer at Germany's largest airport, almost any spot on earth can be reached. Looking at the Lufthansa network alone, there are currently (as of September 2025) 220 destinations to reach within the group.

Vienna Airport, on the other hand, can be seen in the same 118 Destinations .

This map clearly shows that Vienna Airport cannot compete with a hub like Frankfurt. This is understandable, given that the larger of the two has regularly generated an average of around 60 million passengers per year in recent years, while Vienna, in extremely successful years, has now reached around 30 million.

Vienna Airport vs Frankfurt

In summary, Vienna Airport, as a hub, provides solid European traffic to major European cities. However, it becomes more difficult when it comes to destinations on other continents. Africa and Central/South America are not included at all in Austrian Airlines' current flight schedule. The airline is generally well represented in the Middle East, but its presence in the rest of Asia is very weak compared to Frankfurt.

In North American traffic, the portfolio includes several destinations, although the West Coast of the USA is only connected to Los Angeles. The southeastern regions, such as Florida, or the central United States, remain a blank spot for AUA.

Germany is by far Austria's most important trading partner for imports and exports, which is precisely why the state airports need connections to Germany's most important air traffic hub. Furthermore, it can easily be added that suggestions such as serving another hub airport such as London, Istanbul, Paris, or Amsterdam often make no sense when the most important business partners are located in German-speaking countries, and Lufthansa has a near-dominant position in this region. Furthermore, almost all of the other airports mentioned belong to various airline alliances, which complicates matters considerably.

Vienna Airport is by no means a weak airport; it does a great job, but it can rarely satisfy the industrially and tourism-strong federal states of Upper Austria, Styria, Tyrol, Carinthia, and Salzburg on its own as much as Frankfurt Airport does. At best, every regional airport is always connected to both.

This post was written by: Andreas Knoll