Covid-19 crisis – Vienna Airport Restart Package

The outspread of the Coronavirus Covid-19 pushed the aviation sector into a crisis never seen before.

Currently traffic is slowly recovering. Nonetheless the whole industry has to face the economic consequences of the global shutdown with numerous travel warnings still in effect.

In order to support airlines that were badly affected by the Covid-19 crisis, Vienna Airport plans to offer incentives that assist in the resumption of air travel.

„Covid-19 has hit tourism and aviation extremely hard: airlines had to cancel most of their services, ground their fleet and Vienna Airport did experience a dramatic decline of more than 99% in April, May and in the first weeks of June. This development is reflected in local tourism trends. International guests are staying away; hotels, restaurants and shops are under pressure. Within our Restart Package we would like to support airlines to ramp up their services and to increase their passenger volumes. That again will boost tourism and aviation.“, says Julian Jaeger, Joint CEO Vienna Airport. Furthermore, he stated „With these measure we would like to assist the airlines efficiently in decrease their fixed costs and in the medium term in rebuilding their capacities and passenger volumes. Today we are setting the stage for the comeback of aviation in 2021 with the goal to achieve pre-Covid-19 level.“

In Restart Package is based on 2 pillars:

• With retroactive effect from 29 March 2020 and lasting until the end of year 2020, VIE will implement an incentive where 100% of the landing charge for scheduled passenger flights will be refunded.

• In 2021 already existing customers will be supported in re-establishing capacities that were initially planned in 2020. The requested slots for scheduled passenger flights planned in 2020 at Vienna Airport are used as the basis. For airlines resuming their services as planned in 2020, Vienna Airport will incentivize each departing passenger ex Vienna with 2, 3 or 4 EUR, depending on the stage length (short,-medium, or long-haul flights) if at least 65% of the requested seats in 2020 are again offered in 2021.

With these incentives Vienna Airport wants to lay a foundation to leave this crisis behind as quickly as possible.

The above incentives were discussed in the Users Committee on Thursday, 25th June 2020and will be submitted to the Civil Aviation Authority for approval.