Austrian Airlines will be launching a new transatlantic route this summer, as flagged by AeroRoutes, adding another destination to the Star Alliance carrier’s route map.
In this post:
Austrian will fly to Boston as of July 2024
As of July 1, 2024, Austrian will launch a 6x weekly flight between Vienna (VIE) and Boston (BOS). The flight will operate every day except Wednesdays, with the following schedule:
OS91 Vienna to Boston departing 10:40AM arriving 1:50PM
OS92 Boston to Vienna departing 5:10PM arriving 7:25AM (+1 day)
The 4,050-mile flight is blocked at 9hr10min westbound and 8hr15min eastbound. Currently flights are on sale through late October 2024, so it remains to be seen if this will be a seasonal route, or if the airline just hasn’t opened up bookings further out yet, as either is possible.
Austrian intends to use a Boeing 767-300 for the route, featuring a total of 211 seats, including 24 business class seats, 30 premium economy seats, and 157 economy seats. While it’s not exactly the world’s most modern plane, the 2-3-2 configuration in economy is quite comfortable, and Austrian has the same business class on the 767 and 777 anyway.
I’m a fan of Austrian in general. While I don’t love the carrier’s business class seats, I do like the carrier’s soft product, as the airline has excellent catering, including a signature coffee menu.
Austrian should soon modernize its long haul fleet, as it will take delivery of 10 Boeing 787s in the coming years. The first batch of 787s should be delivered this year, and it’s expected that some of Lufthansa’s existing 787s will simply be transferred to Austrian.
How Boston fits into Austrian’s route network
Boston will be Austrian’s sixth destination in the United States, complementing flights to Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX), New York (JFK), Newark (EWR), and Washington (IAD).
Austrian had actually initially announced flights to Boston in 2019, with plans to launch the route as of late March 2020. However, as you’d expect, that route never ended up launching due to the pandemic. It’s now finally happening, just over four years behind schedule.
Austrian is part of the Lufthansa Group, so the airline will be joining both Lufthansa and SWISS in offering service to Boston. Lufthansa flies to Boston out of both Frankfurt and Munich, while SWISS flies to Boston out of Zurich.
By the way, selfishly I hope that Austrian might restart flights to Miami (MIA) at some point. The airline used to fly there, though it wasn’t even just a victim of the pandemic — in 2019, Austrian announced that it would cut flights to Florida. However, Miami has seen a lot of growth in the past few years, so who knows, maybe it’ll make a comeback.
Bottom line
As of July 2024, Austrian Airlines will be adding a new route between Vienna and Boston using a Boeing 767. This was first supposed to launch in March 2020, but was delayed due to the pandemic. Now the route is finally happening.
What do you make of Austrian launching Boston flights?
I'm hoping this route won't just be seasonal but am expecting it to be--when it was announced in 2019, the plan was for it to be seasonal.
It's been my experience that when you fly between the U.S. and Europe on Austrian, Lufthansa or Discover, Economy passengers get the exact same meal choice every time; Vegetable Lasagna. Yuck.
I'm surprised by the number of long haul flights Austrian serves, given that they only have 9 long haul aircraft (3 767s, 6 777s).
The LAX-VIE so far is seasonal, roughly April through October. For anyone on the West Coast traveling to Vienna it is a huge advantage (even having to fly to LAX to transfer), since as a nonstop flight you have one 11 hour flight and avoid the (possibly) sleep-interrupting transfer.
How does this relate to the BOS addition?
Not sure how Austrian biz class passengers will fit into the BOS Lufthansa lounge. It’s already bursting at the seems every evening with back-to-back-to-back flights to FRA, ZRH and MUC
This is very exciting for BOS based travelers who love Vienna. So me and about 5-6 other people. But I am VERY EXCITED.
New Englanders like to ski so Vienna provides easy transit to Innsbruck. I imagine the planes will be filled and as someone who lives near Logan, the more airlines the cheaper flights to Europe are.
Good to have another option, but Innsbruck is equally accessible via FRA, or best, direct flight to MUC and then a 2-hour drive.
INN-FRA will be, at least temporarily, axed as of April 2024. Which is a major pain for me being based out of Innsbruck and traveling to the US a lot, as the OS coverage is really limited. The train schedule to Munich also hasn't gotten a lot better, but the crowding and reliably really went down the toilet in the last years.
If only OS or even better UA could give me VIE-SFO instead of yet another east coast destination.
Anywhere in Europe is pretty easily accessible via a US Northeast Hub, but the more options the better for pricing.
while i think financially it makes sense, considering the demand, especially incoming from the US combined with the high ticket prices, it is another boring USA route where there are plenty of flights already. If it has to be USA, then maybe SFO would have been a bit more exciting.
personally I would have hoped for a new route to Singapore or Mexico City. Or at least have Cancun as a year round flight...
while i think financially it makes sense, considering the demand, especially incoming from the US combined with the high ticket prices, it is another boring USA route where there are plenty of flights already. If it has to be USA, then maybe SFO would have been a bit more exciting.
personally I would have hoped for a new route to Singapore or Mexico City. Or at least have Cancun as a year round flight with more frequencies and for Austrian to strike up an interline agreement with Aeromexico, the way Lufthansa already has it.
Alternatively a seasonal long distance leisure route in the mold of MRU would be cool. Possibly Zanzibar, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur, Bali, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota with Cartagena like Edelweis air launched in November, or restart Cape Town.
Instead it is USA again :(
It's a business, not a play thing. Their responsibility is to allocate their very expensive asset - their airplanes - to where they think they'll get the most money, etc. Not where they think it'll "excite" people the most.
OS is a business. Seasonal routes have higher expenses and consume more management time for short duration business. OS either contracts staff at the station or outsources which is less ideal. I assume the calculation includes travelers origination at BOS thru VIE to further locations. VIE used to be considered an easy transfer, still better than other LH hubs (FRA or ZRH).
Given this is a miles and points blog, I would prefer it if posts like this had two additional pieces of information (1) a quick survey of award availability on this route and (2) the best way to redeem miles and points for the route.
PS I was able to login but received an error message when doing so (about not being authorized).
Totally agree. I don't even know whether they have their own mileage program, or belong to some alliance.
Austrian is not very exotic, but in case you didn't know, the article states its a brand from Lufthansa, so do the math.... Star Alliance / Miles & More.
Since OS only has 3 767s, one of the 767 routes (IAD, JFK, YUL) might get the 787 - or be replaced with a 777 and one of the 777 routes might get the 787?