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.
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?
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