Austrian Airlines will discontinue flights between Vienna and Zagreb from mid-October, as a result of reduced demand. The airline will operate its last service between the two cities on October 16. Croatia Airlines, which has temporarily suspended its flights to the Austrian capital, will then take over the route when it resumes operations on October 22. Austrian will make a brief return to Zagreb during the winter for the Christmas and New Year holidays, during which it will run services from December 18, 2020 until January 6, 2021, after which it will again suspend flights until March 1 of next year. Changes at this early stage remain possible.
Austrian Airlines will continue to serve its remaining destinations in the former Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, Podgorica, Pristina and Skopje this winter. Both Austrian and Croatia Airlines are part of the Star Alliance. Among the premium Lufthansa Group carriers, Lufthansa itself will be the only to maintain services to Zagreb throughout the entire winter with flights from Munich. Traffic between the Croatian capital and Vienna has been growing in recent years, with Austrian relying on a notable number of transfer passengers continuing their journey via Vienna onto North America, as well as elsewhere in Europe. Last year, 173.431 travellers flew between Zagreb and the Austrian capital among the two carriers.
Zagreb - Vienna v.v. passenger traffic
| Year | PAX |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 163.960 |
| 2016 | 160.757 |
| 2017 | 164.108 |
| 2018 | 168.384 |
| 2019 | 173.431 |
Austrian Airlines has cut its upcoming winter schedule which will only reach about 30% of last year’s. The carrier will serve some sixty destinations, down from around eighty during the 2019/2020 winter season. Frequencies on routes that are scheduled to go ahead have been greatly reduced. “It has already become apparent in recent weeks that we will have to dress warmer than expected this winter. The new entry restrictions from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and many other countries make adjustments to the schedule necessary. We are prepared for that”, Austrian Airlines’ CEO, Alexis von Hoensbroech, said, comparing the current situation to that of a ship. "Our goal is to manoeuvre our company through this storm with our combined forces. We don't know how long this storm will last”, he added.
Comments
https://www.zagreb-airport.hr/en/business/b2b/statistics/statistics-for-2020/629
The trend is likely to continue until March and then climb up in June.
There are airlines that seem to be doing a far better job at weathering the crisis. Austrian Airlines took the longest to resume flights out of most western European airlines (even though the epidemiological situation in Austria was relatively calm). They have suspended more routes than most airlines and all this despite already getting state aid.
They are just not going to replace any employees in the next 2 years who within this period either retire or leave the company on their own.
Most Balkan inhabitants indeed dont seem to understand this principle.
Austrian does not cancel ZAG. That would imply they won't fly to ZAG at all anymore when they will pause it temporarily for a part of fall and parts of late winter.
You should learn the meaning of the word suspended. It means exactly when the route is not canceled and will come back. Before complaining learn some English.
I recommend you reading some other commemts under today's article. Currently almost only P2P passengers are possible. Due to the short driving distance there are generally almost no P2P between ZAG and VIE. All other OS destinations in Exyu are further away with enough P2P passengers.
Or you can continue to believe what you want / dream of.
Maybe it was from a completely different time period such as in March?
Also nothing to be found on https://www.simply-aviation.com/austrian
BUD is suspended, same as ZAG.
Only PRG is still flown (max. once a day) - but it is a much bigger city and much more important both economically and in a tourism sense, compared to ZAG.