Air Kärnten

Air Kärnten
IATA ICAO Call sign
- - —
FoundedNovember 2014
Ceased operationsApril 2015
Operating basesKlagenfurt Airport
Fleet size—
Destinations9 planned
HeadquartersKlagenfurt, Austria
Key peopleIngo Hitzenhammer, CEO
Websiteairkaernten.at

Air Kärnten was an Austrian start-up airline which never started operations.

History

The company was founded in November 2014 and was named after the Austrian state of Carinthia or Kärnten in German. It planned to launch two weekly scheduled flights from Klagenfurt to London-Southend in May 2015 alongside several charter services. It announced charter flights from Klagenfurt to Girona, Lisbon, Palma de Mallorca, Naples, Rhodes and Kos as well as from Graz Airport to Preveza.[1]

However, on 31 March 2015, Air Kärnten cancelled their planned scheduled route from Klagenfurt to London Southend Airport ahead of its start due to low demand - it just received nine bookings since the announcement of the route.[2] In February 2015, it has been reported that several Austrian travel agencies did not sell holiday packages requiring Air Kärnten flights until the airline gained a license for their planned flight operations.[3] The airline announced the likely start of operations as a virtual airline as the licence might not be granted ahead of the start of operations.[4]

Air Kärnten planned to lease a 50-seater Bombardier CRJ200 aircraft to operate their services.[5] However, as of March 2015, a change of the desired aircraft type had been expressed.[4] The airline additionally announced the lease of a Fokker 100 for some flights.[6]

The first flights should have commenced by 30 April 2015, however the website of Air Kärnten had been shut down a few weeks prior to this date without further information and the flights have been removed from the schedule of Klagenfurt Airport, where Air Kärnten was supposed to be based.[7] Therefore, the state of Air Kärnten remained unclear. As of February 2017, there were no new signs of activity.

Destinations

As of April 2015, Air Kärnten planned to operate the following route network:

 Austria
 Greece
 Italy
 Portugal
 Spain

Fleet

As of April 2015, Air Kärnten planned to utilize the following aircraft:

Aircraft In Service Orders Passengers Notes
Bombardier CRJ200 — 1 50 planned to be transferred from Cimber on lease from Bombardier[8]
Fokker 100 — 1 100 planned to be leased[6]
Total — 2

References

  1. ^ "Air Kaernten". Archived from the original on February 9, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  2. ^ "Air Kärnten sagt London-Flüge ab".
  3. ^ "Heftiger Gegenwind für Air Kärnten".
  4. ^ a b "Air Kärnten persumably to launch as virtual carrier".
  5. ^ ""Air Kärnten" hebt Ende Mai ab". 2015-02-09.
  6. ^ a b "Air Kärnten scraps London".
  7. ^ "Airport Klagenfurt | KLU". Archived from the original on 2015-05-23. Retrieved 2015-05-09.
  8. ^ "Air Kärnten on ch-aviation".