Austrian Airlines has to postpone the vaccination campaign announced for April 2021 for flight personnel and ground staff with direct customer contact. Originally there were signals from the responsible health authority that this was due to the national vaccination plan in April 2021 can be carried out.

As a precaution, Austrian Airlines therefore entered theoretically possible vaccination dates in the duty roster. These are now obsolete, because the action can be carried out in May 2021 at the earliest, confirmed a spokeswoman. The background is outside the responsibility of the airline, because Austria is behind schedule with regard to the timeline of the national vaccination plan. Among other things, this results from the fact that fewer cans than contractually agreed were delivered.

The Alpine republic is particularly hard hit by the fact that AstraZeneca has only delivered a small fraction of the ordered and contractually agreed vaccination doses and, according to the current state of information, will also fall well below the quotas in the second quarter of 2021. The delays announced by Johnson & Johnson could also have a negative impact on vaccination progress in Austria.

For the Austrian Airlines employees it is therefore “please wait”. A spokeswoman for the carrier said in this context: “We pushed the provisional appointment slots into May. But we still have no information as to whether and when we can start in May ”. In other words: The dates now announced for May 2021 are still theoretical, as they depend on official decisions within the framework of the national vaccination plan. A postponement is therefore expressly not excluded.