Since March 18, 2021, Austrian Airlines has had to pull out your wallet for food and drinks in economy class on short and medium-haul flights. The sister companies Swiss and Lufthansa will soon switch to paid catering. On Monday afternoon, the carrier invited visitors to taste the chargeable offer.

The meals will continue to be delivered from the previous one Catering partner Do & Co. There was a change in the lounge area when it reopened last year to competitor Donhauser. Flughafen Wien AG also announced a few days ago that in their lounges In the future, DoN will also provide food and drinks.

At Austrian Airlines, it is not the first attempt to implement paid catering on board. At the beginning of the 2000s, the then general manager Vagn Sørensen reacted to the competitor SkyEurope, which was initially successful from Bratislava, and introduced food and drinks for a fee. The success was extremely moderate, which is why the company returned to the included catering under the subsequent company boss Alfred Ötsch. Most recently they offered under the guise of Corona only water, tea and coffee on.

You have to pay since March 18, 2021

In the course of the introduction of the new paid catering, the possibility of meals was added To be ordered in advance against payment finally abolished. Similar to Ryanair, Wizzair and Easyjet, you can only order and pay directly on board. Food and drinks should only be included if the flight lasts at least three hours. Under this you have to pay, whereby a water and a piece of chocolate are distributed free of charge. The new catering concept has been in use since March 18, 2021.

OE-LZF received cabin upgrade

Austrian Airlines also presented the new cabin on Monday. The first machine to be equipped with this is the Airbus A320 with the registration OE-LZF. The medium-haul jet has been in the service of AUA since October 2019 and has now received an upgrade of the interior. Among other things, there are now USB stretch boxes available to travelers. The carrier explains that the legroom should have increased by five centimeters. The OE-LZF is 7,4 years old.

Austrian Airlines intends to gradually upgrade the Airbus fleet to the new short and medium-haul cabin. Of the Machine type A319 however, it will be phased out in the foreseeable future. The same applies to the DHC Dash 8-400, with two units will remain in service until around the end of May 2021. Originally, these should have been used for the last time at the end of March 2021.

Schnitzel, cola, cake and coffee for 25 euros

During the course of the product presentation, the Aviation.Direct editor tasted a menu that consisted of a schnitzel, a mug of cola, a piece of Sachertorte and a coffee. For this, according to the menu, a proud 25 euros are due. The schnitzel costs 12 euros, the cake and coffee in combination cost 10 euros. AUA asks you to pay 3 euros for the cup of coke. The menu is in PDF format provided here

Editor's conclusion

The editor was pleasantly surprised by the taste of the dishes. The schnitzel really tastes like in the restaurant and the potatoes are very good too. Maybe you could have seasoned this a little better. The Sachertorte is 1A. The schnitzel was served warm, but you shouldn't gossip for a long time, but eat it straight away, because it gets cold very quickly.

The price-performance ratio, on the other hand, is rather mediocre, because the schnitzel portion could have been more generous for a proud 12 euros. A total of 25 euros for such an on-board menu is quite steep. However, it cannot be assumed that many passengers will put together such a menu, but will rather leave it with food and drink or coffee and cake or just one drink. Or just don't buy anything at all, as with low costers. After all, the AUA still offers free water so that nobody has to die of thirst.