Domestic Flights

Operating a modern, fuel-efficient fleet over an expanding route system and carrying almost 1.5 million passengers in 1986, Austrian once again contemplated intercontinental service, now both to New York in the west and to Tokyo in the east, and toward this end it had converted its previous order for two medium-range Airbus Industrie A-310-200s to the long-range A-310-300 version on June 25, 1986.  Austrian had signed the original memorandum of understanding for the A-310-200s as far back as April 18, 1979, a date which was to prove a full decade before the service would actually get off the ground.  Three factors could be cited as to why the time may have been ripe for a relaunching of this service:

1. In the 15-year interval since the last intercontinental service had been terminated, the home market had considerably grown, a fact demonstrated by the prevailing increases in nonstop US-Vienna service, provided by Pan Am, Royal Jordanian, and Tarom from New York, and by American from Chicago.

2. Its route structure in general equally offered excellent connections to West European, North African, and Middle Eastern destinations.

3. The A-310 had thus enabled long, thin routes such as Lyon-New York with Air France, Frankfurt-Newark with Lufthansa, Istanbul-New York with THY, and New York-Stockholm with Pan Am to have been served.

The decision to reinstate intercontinental service, scheduled for the spring of 1989, had officially been made two years earlier, on June 25, 1987, and would be operated by two Pratt and Whitney-powered A-310-300s which would serve the Vienna-New York and Vienna-Moscow-Tokyo routes, the latter in cooperation with Aeroflot and ANA All-Nippon Airways.  These services had been predicted to have depended upon the connecting passenger for profitability.  On the New York route, for example, a 66-percent, break-even load factor had been needed during the first year of operation, primarily comprised of US-originating, Austria-originating, and connecting passengers.  Both routes had relied on the lucrative, high-yield, frequent business traveler who had been unable to take advantage of the lower, restricted fares.  Austrian Airlines would offer a first class cabin on its A-310-300s for the first time in its history.

The first aircraft, registered OE-LAA “New York,” had been delivered on December 22, 1988, and the second, OE-LAB “Tokyo,” had followed in January.  The aircraft had constituted the airline’s first widebody, twin-aisle type.

Austrian had returned to the transatlantic US market on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1989, when two smoke puffs had signaled the touchdown of the red-white-red liveried widebody twin-jet, configured for 12 first class, 37 business class, and 123 economy class passengers, at JFK amid warm spring weather.  After a brief turn-around, the aircraft, operating as Flight OS 502 and piloted by Captain Braeuer and First Officer Kutzenberger, had been tug-maneuvered away from the gate at 1900 with 121 passengers, who would be served by nine cabin attendants, and took off into the deep purple dusk at a take off weight of 153,603 kilos, 40,300 of which had been fuel required for the Atlantic crossing.  The flight had been 18 years in the making.

Airport, reservations, sales, and marketing staff had subsequently gathered in the Icelandair Saga Lounge used by its business class passengers for a celebratory drink and a group photograph.

The Tokyo route had been opened in the summer and the A-310, to become Austrian’s intercontinental widebody, had served it for more than a decade, operating to multiple US, African, and Far Eastern destinations with four aircraft in a final two-class seat configuration registered as follows:

1. OE-LAA

2. OE-LAB

3. OE-LAC

4. OE-LAD

By the summer of 1989, Austrian Airlines had served 54 cities in 36 countries in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Japan with a total route length of 100,358 unduplicated kilometers. These services had been operated by 26 aircraft comprised of the Fokker F.50, the McDonnell-Douglas MD-81/82/83/87, and the Airbus A-310-300 whose average age had then been four years and had been describable as follows:

1. Airbus A-310-300: A long-range, medium-capacity, wide-body, twin-aisle, twin-engine jet airliner--Austrian Airlines’ intercontinental jet.  Austrian Airlines had dubbed it an “intercontinental European.”

2. McDonnell-Douglas MD-81: A medium-range, medium-capacity, narrow-body, single-aisle, twin-engine jet airliner--Austrian Airline’s European, North African, and Middle Eastern workhorse.  Austrian Airlines had described it as a “universal medium-haul airliner and the mainstay of its fleet.”

3. McDonnell-Douglas MD-82: The carrier had ordered the variant “for special-duty scheduled and charter services.”

4. McDonnell-Douglas MD-87: The short-fuselaged, lower-capacity version had been “tailor-made to its needs in capacity and range.”

5. Fokker F.50: A short- and regional-range, low-capacity, narrow-body, single-aisle, twin-engine turboprop airliner operated by Austrian Airline’s Austrian Air Services subsidiary on domestic and select long, thin international routes.  Austrian Airlines had considered it “a propjet specialist in city-hopping.”

In addition to Austrian Air Services, Austrian Airlines owned 80 percent of Austrian Air Transport (AAT), which operated worldwide charter and inclusive tour (IT) flights with both Austrian Airlines and Austrian Air Services aircraft, having carried 506,000 passengers in 1988.  It also maintained a close marketing agreement with Tyrolean Airways which operated services from Innsbruck with 37-passenger de Havilland of Canada DHC-8-100s and 50-passenger DHC-7-100s.

Contrary to most European flag carriers, which had operated transatlantic service to the United Stares and Canada with quad-engined DC-4s since World War II, Austrian Airlines had maintained its medium-range route system until April 1, 1969.  It had been at this time that it had stretched its wings across the Atlantic with a large-capacity, intercontinental Boeing 707-320, registered OE-LBA and chartered from Sabena Belgian World Airways, which had been deployed on the Vienna-New York route with an intermediate stop in Brussels.  This so-called “transatlantic experiment,” despite Austrian’s delay in launching it, had ultimately proven both a premature and financially unsound one for two primary reasons:

1. The home market had still been too small.

2. Vienna-Schwechat had been insufficiently developed as a hub, providing few connecting flights to which this transatlantic service could transfer passengers.

Resultantly, after a two-year trial, the 707 had been returned to Sabena on March 31, 1971, leaving Austrian once again to concentrate on its primarily continental route system for which nine short-to medium-range, low-capacity McDonnell-Douglas DC-9-30s had been ordered.

Similar in overall design to the Caravelle, but manufactured in the United States, the t-tailed jetliner offered a slightly higher passenger capacity, greater payload capability, a higher gross weight, more powerful engines, and improved economy, and with it Austrian entered a new era which would span almost two decades.  It had later described this design as “the start of something big, classical and still modern.”  The first DC-9-30 had been delivered on June 19, 1971 and the type soon proved to be the mainstay of its fleet.

In 1974, Austrian leased a McDonnell-Douglas DC-8-63F, registered OE-IBO, from Overseas National Airways (ONA) for cargo services to Hong Kong, but these were later discontinued.  Other than the 707-320, the DC-8-63F was its only other large-capacity, long-range, quad-engined jet.

So versatile and popular had the DC-9 design proven itself to be, that Austrian later ordered five stretched, higher-capacity DC-9-50s.  The first of these had been delivered on September 14, 1975.

That these twin-engined aircraft and the discontinuation of its transatlantic service were proper strategies for the Austrian national carrier had been reflected by its positive growth.  On June 26, 1974, for example, a new maintenance base had been opened at Schwechat International Airport-Vienna.  Its value had also continued to swell: in 1967 its share capital had increased by AUS 140 million to AUS 290 million.  In 1969, it had further increased to 390 million.  And in 1962 it had reached the one billion mark.  During each of the three years, from 1972 to 1974, it had posted a profit.  Its route system had equally expanded: in 1976, Austrian had stretched its wings to Cairo in the Middle East and to Stockholm and Helsinki in Scandinavia.

Demand, soon outpacing capacity, had necessitated an initial order for eight McDonnell-Douglas DC-9-80s to replace its existing DC-9-50s.  Also designated DC-9 Super 80, this aircraft had been a more modernized version of the previous –50 series variant for medium-range deployment and featured a further fuselage stretch for still higher capacity and refanned, higher-thrust, and more fuel-efficient Pratt and Whitney JT8D-209 engines.  Austrian, which shared the distinction of being launch customer for the design with Swissair, inaugurated the first elongated DC-9-81 into service on October 26, 1980 on the Vienna-Zurich route with aircraft OE-LDR “Wien.”  The twin-jet was later redesignated MD-81 and quickly became the short- to medium-range workhorse of its fleet.

New additions to its ever-expanding route system included Larnaca in 1979; Jeddah, also in 1979; and Tripoli in 1981.

Another 1980 milestone had been the foundation of Austrian Air Services (AAS), which would eventually become a wholly-owned subsidiary, to operate Austrian domestic routes with two 19-passenger, twin-turboprop Fairchild Swearingen Metro II commuter aircraft.  The first such service had been operated on April 1.

Austrian plied smooth skies.  Indeed, its 1980 balance sheet had indicated a AUS 71.5 million net profit, its tenth consecutive one.

The MD-81, intemittently proving itself to be as optimally suited to its route system as the twin-jet SE.210-VIR, the DC-9-30, and the DC-9-50 had been, was followed by its shorter-fuselage derivative, the MD-87, which Austrian ordered on December 19, 1984 for lower-capacity route sectors, and the Austrian Air Services fleet was equally upgraded with the addition of two 50-passenger Fokker F.50 twin-turboprops which were ordered on September 25 of the following year.