Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) will tentatively retire its eighteen wholly-owned Dash 8-400s by the end of 2021 as it looks to transition to an all-jet fleet.
The Lufthansa Group subsidiary said in a statement that of its eighteen Dash 8-400s, two out of three that will be phased out in 2019, have already been decommissioned. Thereafter, a further nine will follow in 2020 with the remaining six to go in 2021.
As the De Havilland Aircraft of Canada turboprops' are withdrawn, so Austrian Airlines will induct six more A320-200s into its fleet between August 2019 and January 2020. Two are due in August, one in September, and one in October of this year. All four are ex-Avianca Brasil stock and are leased from Aviation Capital Group. Two A320s that will be inducted in January next year are ex-Juneyao Air and are leased from CDB Aviation.
"These six additional A320s should also be understood as a strong signal towards low-cost competition. We are defending our market position and are determined to fight for our customers," Austrian Airlines CCO Andreas Otto said.
Austrian uses its turboprops to run domestic flights between Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt, and Innsbruck as well as shorthaul regional European hops to Italy, Germany, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus, Slovakia, Switzerland, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine, Montenegro, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Serbia, France, Poland, Moldova, and Lithuania.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Austrian's narrowbody/regional fleet also entails seven A319-100s, twenty-three A320-200s, six A321-100/-200s, and seventeen E195s.
