Star Alliance members Air Canada and Austrian Airlines are expanding their transatlantic joint venture (JV) as they launch new services.
Austrian Airlines launched daily Vienna-Montreal services and Air Canada took over Austrian’s daily Toronto Pearson-Vienna services from April 29.
“In this JV we share risk, revenue and commercial costs. Air Canada offers connections to 63 destinations in Canada and to 63 in the US via our hubs,” Air Canada VP-global sales and alliances John MacLeod told ATW at Air Canada’s headquarters at Montreal Trudeau Airport.
The JV includes Air Canada, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) and United Airlines flights across the North Atlantic and related connecting flights.
“With the launch of the Montreal route, we hope to break the 15 million passenger mark in 2019. We expect 75,000 passengers in the first year,” Austrian Airlines CFO Wolfgang Jani said.
In 2018, Austrian Airlines transported a total of 13.9 million passengers.
Jani expects 55% of passenger volumes on the new route will be transfer traffic from Montreal via its Vienna hub. Leading transfer destinations are Athens, Tehran and Tel Aviv…
