Although Austria continues to prohibit incoming passenger flights from a total of nine countries, the two low-cost airlines continue to sell tickets during the blocked period. Wizzair has announced a new destination from Vienna, Mykonos.

The Hungarian low-cost airline intends to offer two weekly rotations between Vienna and Mykonos from August 11, 2020. The route is to be served on Tuesday and Saturday with medium-haul Airbus A320 jets.

However, the announcement also has a certain “aftertaste”, because due to official regulations, flights from a total of nine countries are not allowed to land in Austria beyond June 30, 2020. The new regulation applies until July 15, 2020. However, this does not prevent Ryanair and Wizzair from continuing to sell tickets on the prohibited routes for the banned period. For example, both low-cost airlines were still offering tickets from Portugal, Lombardy, the United Kingdom or Sweden to Austria on Tuesday at 13:00 p.m., even though it became clear shortly after 6:00 a.m. that this was not possible for official reasons.

It would be permissible to fly with passengers to the blocked countries, provided that local regulations do not conflict with this, and then return empty to Austria. However, this is extremely expensive for airlines and is therefore only practiced in absolutely exceptional cases.

Competitor Austrian Airlines took the connections to the nine blocked countries, provided that these are included in the route network, in both directions from the sale. Other airlines have also acted. Wizzair and Ryanair / Lauda have repeatedly noticed in the past few weeks that tickets were sold for appointments that were not feasible due to an Austrian state ban.