As of the beginning of October, Austrian Airlines will begin an extensive reorganisation of its current service network. The restructure will see international destinations such as Hong Kong, Havana and Colombo removed from the carrier’s winter 2018/19 timetable.

The airline’s domestic route between Vienna and Linz will also be terminated, beginning with the 2018/19 winter flight schedule, with the last scheduled flight from Linz to land in the Austrian capital on 27 October 2018.

Austrian Airlines will also rework its Middle Eastern coverage with Isfahan and Shiraz, both in Iran, removed from operations, as soon as September this year. However, the company’s longstanding traditional flight to the Iranian capital Teheran will continue unchanged. The airline will also cut its connectivity to Miami to a summer-only service.

“We aim to be more attractive to business travellers”

The restructure comes as a “realignment of the airline’s portfolio” in order for Austrian Airlines to open up its customer’s travel options as well boost its product in the United States, as Austrian Airlines CCO Andreas Otto, explained: “With the entire fleet and now 12 long-haul aircraft, we want to offer a denser route network and thus an improved offer for our passengers.

“For this reason, we will take advantage of available capacities, especially to serve North America more optimally. This way, we aim to be more attractive to business travellers and transfer passengers in Eastern Europe and also to simply gain more customers.”

Austrian Airlines will fly more often to North America and China in the upcoming flight schedule. It will operate daily flights to Chicago and six weekly connections to Newark, an increase of two flights per week compared to the previous year. The airline will offer up to five weekly flights to New York JFK – a weekly increase of three flights.

One additional flight each week will be offered to Toronto, Beijing and Shanghai in the coming winter, raising the flight total to five per week for each of these destinations. Starting 27 October, Austrian Airlines will also commence flights to Cape Town in South Africa.