In April 2023, Austrian Airlines revealed plans to refresh its long haul fleet, replacing its existing wide body aircraft with Boeing 787s. It’s an exciting day on that front, as Austrian is today operating its first-ever long haul flight with a 787 Dreamliner.
Continue reading: Austrian Airlines Boeing 787-9s Now Flying: What To Expect
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I'm flying on one of the 787s in J in early July from ORD. Excited to check it out.
How easy is it to do a 1 hr 50 min connection through VIE Airport if one needs to go from a Schengen onto a long-haul non-Schengen flight? That's the connection time I am being given to try this product early next year on VIE-IAD. Would be nice to try a new airline.
Wien airport is not that big so 1 hour and 50 minutes is more than enough according to me. I had stopover of 1 hour in Wien going from China to Italy and never missed the connection.
We will be on the flight in J on the second day of service as we make our way back to JFK from Croatia and Montenegro.
IMHO you should be more than safe with that connection time. I think they sell connections with a minimum connection time of 30 minutes for VIE.
This is indeed well over MCT, no problem at all. That would be about twice as much as you need at any European airport, let alone Vienna which revolves around very short connection times.
About time for new J seats. The current ones are getting reeaaaallly long in the tooth. Have been avoiding them. Ditto for Swiss.
Recently I had a flight with Eva air (business class) connecting with Austrian Airlines at VIE airport to GVA (same ticket).
The plane was late but it was doable, Eva air even sent me one assistant to provide expedited transfert to my shenggen gate. Immigration was very fast they understand we needed to hurry.
Security take forever, even it was obvious that I needed to hurry, the security staff take ages to scan my things very slowly, open everything, do explosive verification on everything, it was beyond ridiculous.
I even asked if it was on purpose because I needed to hurry. Even the airport assistant was rolling her eyes.
The assistant called the gate to keep it open, as we are arriving, but it seem nobody cared at all.
Finally I missed my flight for 2 min.
Some argument happen between the ground staff of Austrian and the ground assistant at the gate.
No a premium experience. If these people from Vienna airport think passengers are a nuisance, better to change job or to don't make VIE a hub.
It was morning and next flight for GVA was in late afternoon. Missed my appointment and important event there.
These are rather small premium cabins - and in particular very small Premium Economy: Austrian's 767s have 36 seats versus just 21 seats in the new 787?
Easy, especially since for Schengen to long haul/Non-Schengen you won't have to go through security. Immigration in Vienna rarely takes more than a few minutes.
Maybe PE just doesn't sell out of Vienna? I imagine there was some serious data-crunching before they settled on the delivery config.
This is just fine and pretty regular for Austrian, it's no secret Lufthansa haven't shown much love or interest on Austrian or Brussels, if they considered Austrian to be on the same league of Lufthasa or Swiss, they would show high regard for this brand. They were never gonna send new airframes to Austrian. I don't expect to see premium cabins on Austrian, Brussels or Edelweiss, they will most likely get second hand planes from Lufthansa. The truth is Lufthansa is just taking advantage of this huge second hand 787 market, they will keep their new frames and the "premium" high end product to themselves. It's a shame given Austrian's history and great heritage as a national airline. They should've at least tried to introduce an Allegris/ Senses version of Business Class for Austrian, or at least a new Business "suite" with doors.
It's great that ITA Airways/Revamped Alitalia purchased their new frames and introduced new cabins before The Lufthansa Group acquisition, I can't imagine what they would've done had they put their hands on ITA years ago. Austrian deserves better, hopefully they'll improve soft product and keep these planes clean and well preserved. Aat least they add some red here and there.
OS is playing games with this plane and inconveniencing customers! As I mentioned before, we are scheduled to be on OS87 today (June 18) with a scheduled departure out of VIE at 16:55. We were coming in from DVK and were notified flight was to be 2 hours late leaving VIE.
Come to find out, OS send the 787 to DUS (rumor has it due to Austria/France match yesterday) to add more capacity on flight OS153 which is normally operated by an E195 or A321. Flight back from DUS was listed as OS154 and had a scheduled arrival in VIE 30 minutes AFTER our OS87 flight using the plane was supposed to depart! Of course DUS flight is further delayed so we are now at 2.5 hour delay out of VIE to JFK for OS87. WTF? OS clearly didn’t give a crap that OS87 with pax to JFK was going to be delayed or they wouldn’t have sent the 787 to DUS in the first place. We are now stuck sitting in VIE for over 5 hours!