sokolov

Niki (HG) will stop flying VIE-ATH-VIE (winter timetable). That means a significant drop of competition on that route. Only A3 and OS remain, and both are *A.

KLouis

Well, according to the winter schedule in their site, they'll be flying a non-stop daily except Saturday (HG8640).

LukasVIE

No, they cancelled the route starting with the new winter time table -- all flights are zero-ed out already

KLouis

I guess Niki co-operates with A3 as far as the maintenance of their web page is concerned: before answering yesterday, I re-checked the HG site and their flight appeared in their schedule, including the corresponding pdf (by the way, labelled "...to help you plan your route"). I makes me wonder why the Internet resources in some airlines are the last ones to reflect changes.

LukasVIE

Air Berlin and Niki are really unreliable when it comes to announcing route cancellations -- they cancelled VIE-MUC as well which is also a pretty significant route. On the bright side, Aegean should do significantly better now on its VIE-ATH route -- Star Alliance is in complete control now

Xandrios

Better for Aegean, worse for the pax probably. Prices may very will rise due to Air Berlin leaving..

What I don't understand why Aegean doesn't work with Austrian to allow OS/A3 combined flights. Eg AMS-VIE (OS) VIE-ATH (A3). Would be great if they could offer such routing. So far they only offer this through some lufthansa flights on which they codeshare.

sokolov

Haha, now Ryanair is starting BTS-ATH!

Not that I would fly Ryanair, but this IS a new competitor for the ATH-VIE point-to-point market.

Xandrios

How so? The distance from BTS to Vienna is too large to be an easy alternative to VIE right?

:D!

It's faster to travel from VIE to BTS than from my house to LHR (14 km) sometimes.

Ryanair used to market their flights to BTS as Vienna(Bratislava) - this appears to have stopped.

sokolov

Bratislava (the city) is part of the core Catchment Area of VIE. The drive between VIE and BTS is about 45 minutes by car, and the drive to the city of Bratislava is even less.

As a result, a significant number of VIE-users resides in Slovakia. If they get an alternative in BTS they will probably prefer it. Or look at Györ in Hungary - for them, VIE, BTS and BUD or roughly equidistant. Within a two hour drive of VIE, you have sizeable parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary and even a sliver of Slovenia. You get a massive overlap If you draw the same 2 hour circle for BTS. Except for Slovenia. :-)

Add the huge delta in parking fees: One week parking at BTS is 35 Euro. One week at VIE is at least Euro 100. And if you want to drop someone off or pick them up, that is free at BTS. VIE charges almost Euro 5 in short term parking fees.

Sadly, BTS is mostly Ryanair these days. It was a different picture when Sky Europe (NE) was around.