Check-in counter at Klagenfurt Airport (Photo: Angelika Evergreen).
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How Klagenfurt Airport looks speechlessly towards Salzburg and Innsbruck winter after winter

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Austria is a winter sports paradise and attracts millions of ski tourists to the country every year. The states of Tyrol and Salzburg immediately spring to mind, but Vorarlberg, Carinthia and Styria also have a lot to offer. Olympic champions such as Benni Raich, Marcel Hirscher and Hermann Maier are well known in the two tourist hotspots, but Carinthia also has gold winners such as Franz Klammer and Matthias Mayer.

But what does this mean in terms of tourism? It is known from aviation circles that the Austrian regional airports Innsbruck & Salzburg generate a large proportion of their passenger numbers mainly in winter. Mainly through charter flights and especially on Saturdays, when the beds in the hotels are about to be changed. The ski tourists mainly fly in from regions in Northern Europe such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland.

The ranking of the most famous ski resorts is often disputed. However, if you follow the well-known website “Bergfex.at”, an Austrian internet platform for mountain tourism and alpine sports, you get the following top 30 list:

And it is precisely these yellow marked ski areas that provide us with the transition to the main question of this report, which is: “What is going on at Klagenfurt Airport in winter?”

In order to answer this question as best as possible, a look at the respective arrival schedules via “Flightradar24” of the three airports should give us an overview of what is going on on a typical winter Saturday.

A picture says more than 1000 words

These pictures should be enough to describe the situation as best as possible!

Most popular ski resorts in Carinthia

In addition to great skiers who regularly collect World Cup points in the ÖSV squad, Carinthia also has well-known ski resorts. Most notably, a top 10 ski resort in Austria, Nassfeld.

  1. wet field

110 kilometers of slopes in blue, red and black – Carinthia's largest and sunniest ski area on the border with Italy

  • Katschberg

80 kilometres of slopes, directly accessible via the Tauern motorway (A10). Fantastic slopes of all levels of difficulty connect the federal states of Salzburg and Carinthia.

  • Gerlitzen Alpe

53 kilometres of slopes – In the heart of Carinthia, just a few kilometres from the city of Villach, the Gerlitzen is very easy to reach.

  • Bad Kleinkirchheim

Bad Kleinkirchheim has 103 kilometers of slopes, is known for its FIS Women's World Cup races, but is also the hotspot for all fans of pop and folk music with the “Wenn die Musi spielt” Winter Open Air.

  • Turracher Höhe

43 kilometres of slopes – the winter jewel on the border of Carinthia and Styria, high up in the Nock Mountains.

How far are these ski resorts from Klagenfurt Airport?

Assuming that tourists are picked up from Klagenfurt Airport and transported by car/minibus/bus to their hotel in the respective ski area, the following travel times +/- can be expected.

  • Klagenfurt Airport to Nassfeld: 1 hour 10 minutes
  • Klagenfurt Airport to Katschberg: 1 hour 15 minutes
  • Klagenfurt Airport to Gerlitzen Alpe: 35 minutes
  • Klagenfurt Airport to Bad Kleinkirchheim: 55 minutes
  • Klagenfurt Airport to Turracher Höhe: 1 hour
Logo of Klagenfurt Airport (Photo: Andreas Knoll).

Guests from abroad winter season 2023/24 – Statistics of the State of Carinthia

The number of arrivals of non-Austrian guests in the 2023/24 winter season was 519.990 and the number of overnight stays was 2.243.132, writes the State Office for Statistics of the Carinthian State Government.

Germany is by far the biggest player in terms of foreign tourists in Carinthia. Surprisingly, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Netherlands, which often travel to Carinthia specifically to ice skate in addition to skiing, are in second place. They are followed by Poland, Croatia, the neighboring countries Slovenia, Italy and other countries that are not included in this graph.

Attentive observers would now claim that the Salzburg and Innsbruck airports survive solely on British, Irish and Scandinavian passengers, which Carinthia does not have. This is true to a certain extent if you exclude the overnight stay figures for these countries from the statistics for Carinthia.

Great Britain accounts for just 1,8% of the total number of overnight stays by all foreign tourists and Denmark has 0,7%, whereas Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Norway play no role at all in Carinthia.

Nevertheless, this in no way justifies the fact that only one charter plane from Hamburg lands at Klagenfurt Airport.

Klagenfurt Airport (Photo: Andreas Knoll).

Where should charter planes come from for more winter tourism?

Germany not only brings most tourists to Carinthia, but also has regions such as northern and eastern Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia with cities with millions of inhabitants, some of which are more than 10 hours' drive from Carinthia. Airports in these regions are Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Hanover, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund.

The Netherlands is crazy about Carinthia in summer and winter alike. The airports in Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Rotterdam could fly in potential tourists.

Poland would be the third large group that could be served using charter packages. Poland has experienced a kind of economic miracle in the past three decades, and the country has become a growth champion. Larger airports are in Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Katowice, Wroclaw and Poznan.

Klagenfurt Airport apron on a Saturday (Photo: Andreas Knoll).

Potential markets that do not have mountains of their own and have purchasing power:

  • Belgium – Brussels, Antwerp airports
  • Great Britain – Airports London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Belfast
  • Denmark – Copenhagen, Billund, Aalborg airports

Why can’t Carinthia do what Salzburg + Tyrol have been doing for decades?

If you ask the people of Carinthia, you almost always get the same answer from all sectors of society. Too many quarrels, arguments and no one is happy for anyone else. There is a danger that one person could take something away from the other, is the perception. As they say in the Carinthian dialect: "Mir nix, dir nix".

What is missing is the common bond, the credo is missing:

"pull together"

Who exactly is meant by this? Airport, tourism, business, politics, hotel industry, Carinthia Advertising.

It remains to be seen whether in the near future someone will have the power and ingenuity to turn this situation around. Because one thing is clear: fewer than zero aircraft will be unable to land. From an optimistic point of view, things can only get better, so that we don't lose hope completely. Carinthia's beautiful mountain landscape, culinary delights and modern ski slopes are all there, it's just a matter of implementation.

And if you would like to see how things work in other regions of Austria, you should look to Tyrol and Salzburg and ideally get training there.

Embraer 195 in Klagenfurt (Photo: Andreas Knoll).

This post was written by: Andreas Knoll

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2 Comments

  • Schönegger Hermann , 20. January 2025 @ 08: 18

    Klagenfurt Airport has been financed with public tax money for decades
    kept alive artificially.
    Comparisons with Salzburg and Innsbruck speak volumes.
    Internationally, the awareness of
    Salzburg and Tyrol are in a completely different league.

  • Max Schintlmeister, 21. January 2025 @ 11: 29

    There are already fully developed plans to establish successful incoming flights at Klagenfurt Airport. However, this would require a joint effort by the state, tourist offices, accommodation providers, mobility providers, incoming agencies, etc. The problem is well known: Carinthia, or rather the catchment area of ​​Klagenfurt Airport, does not have the critical mass to be able to automatically fill flights (which is why comparisons with Salzburg and Innsbruck, or the hopeful look there, are unfortunately not productive). I am convinced that those responsible at Klagenfurt Airport know exactly how things are going in Salzburg and Innsbruck. Unfortunately, this belief has simply become entrenched in journalism.

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