Austrian Airlines celebrates 50th Anniversary

50 years ago – on the 31st of March 1958 – Austrian Airlines took off for its first flight with a Vickers Viscount 779 from Vienna to London. After this maiden flight further scheduled services to Frankfurt, Zurich, Stuttgart, Paris, Rome and Warsaw were launched in the first year of operations of which Warsaw was the first Eastern European destination in the company’s network. Soon followed by Moscow, Bucharest, Belgrade and Sofia in 1959, Vienna developed into a hub providing West-East air transport in the decades that followed.

The Austrian Airlines Group now carries its passengers to 130 destinations around the world. Where the company transported 25,567 passengers and 186 tons of cargo in 1958, it carried 10.8 million passengers and 150,335 tons of cargo in 2007.

To celebrate the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first Austrian Airlines scheduled flight, the company has launched services using one of its aircraft in a design dating back to the 1950s. The Austrian Airbus A320 now appears in the same design as the first aircraft ever flown by Austrian Airlines, the Vickers Viscount, from 1958.

Austrian Airlines Group CEO Alfred Ötsch said, “50 years of Austrian Airlines means 50 years of successful Austrian civil aviation. Since making our first flight to London on 31 March 1958, we have brought together many millions of people from every country in the world, and we are a natural ambassador and powerful advertisement for Austria itself. Austrian Airlines has worked hard to develop a truly outstanding reputation as a quality carrier in every continent of the world and in so doing has transported typically Austrian values such as hospitality and charm around the world. With its successful Focus East strategy, uncompromising insistence upon quality and hugely dedicated workforce, the red-white-red tailfin of Austrian is perfectly positioned to enjoy an independent future.”

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