On Friday, December 29, 2023, the fifth Airbus A320neo arrived at Austrian Airlines' home base in Vienna-Schwechat. The medium-haul jet with the registration OE-LZR landed at 11:46 a.m. and shortly afterwards it went into the hangar.

The plane does not yet have the usual Austrian Airlines livery, but appears completely white. According to the carrier's statement, this will remain the case in the short term, as the aircraft will fly in white until it is completely painted. The aircraft, which was taken over from the Toulouse factory, will be put into scheduled service in the next few weeks. However, a specific date has not yet been set.

The “Thayatal” is the fifth Airbus A320neo in the fleet of the Austrian Lufthansa subsidiary. Between August 2022 and July 2023 you have four identical copies have already been taken over. These are currently the youngest members of the fleet. Next year, the AUA is also scheduled to receive the first Boeing 787-9. However, these are not brand-new machines, but rather jets that are taken over used by the parent company Lufthansa. Austrian Airlines has already confirmed that the originally communicated schedule cannot be adhered to. The background is delivery delays at Boeing. This means that the crane airline needs the aircraft longer than initially expected. The exact impact on AUA's long-haul offerings is still unclear, but it is already foreseeable that the Boeing 767/777s due to be phased out will remain in service a little longer than planned. The re-fleet should take place step by step.

“The arrival of our fifth A320neo is a nice end to the year for Austrian Airlines and a gift for our passengers, who can look forward to even more travel comfort on board. Austrian Airlines will modernize both its short- and medium-haul fleet as well as its long-haul fleet in the coming years. The use of modern and fuel-efficient aircraft, alongside the use of sustainable fuels, is the greatest lever for achieving our ambitious climate goals,” says Austrian Airlines COO Francesco Sciortino.

In the Austrian Airlines configuration, the Airbus A320neo aircraft have 180 seats. The Airspace Cabin is intended to offer more storage space for passengers' hand luggage. Due to the fact that in the cheap economy class fares you have to pay a lot extra for checking in luggage, many passengers use the maximum amount of hand luggage allowed. The industry has now responded to this. Airbus aircraft, for example, have the airspace cabin mentioned above, which is intended to make the “fight for the last storage space for the trolley” unnecessary because there is around 60 percent more volume available compared to conventional overhead bins.