Austrian Airlines is dropping flights to Mumbai owing to the weakening Indian economy, the crisis in European financial markets, and “drastic overcapacity between European airports and the city”.
The five-times weekly flights from Vienna had been reduced from a daily service earlier this year, and the route will cease entirely on March 1, 2009. The news follows the recent dropping of its long-haul route to Chicago earlier this year, as well as short-haul flights to London City, Luxembourg and Riga.
Meanwhile Russian carrier S7 Airlines (formerly Siberian Airlines) is continuing its interest in Austrian. A statement released today said the airline has sent letters to government holding company OIAG, detailing “the principles on which S7 would be interested in investing in it [Austrian Airlines]”.
S7 is Russia’s largest domestic airline, and any merger or takeover with Austrian would enable it to leverage the carrier’s extensive network between Vienna and Eastern Europe. Lufthansa has also been linked with a takeover of Austrian over the last few weeks, and it will be interesting to see if this changes following today’s takeover of Bmi by the German carrier (see online news October 29).
For more information visit s7.ru, aua.com.
Report by Mark Caswell