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Austrian Airlines has been the largest Austrian airline since 1957 and is based in the capital city, Vienna. With its hub at the airport Vienna-Schwechat, the airline provides mainly scheduled flights. The airline has in actual fact existed since the 1930s and originally had its hub in Aspern airport, which is located north of Vienna’s city centre. Even at the time of its opening in 1912, Aspern was considered the most modern and largest of airports in Europe. On the 30th September 1957, the two companies Air Austria and Austrian Airways finally merged to form the Austrian airline company. After a lengthy period of strategic planning, the first flight finally took place in the following spring on 31st March 1958, going from Vienna to London. The airline was extremely successful in the following years and owned a strong fleet of Douglas DC-9 machines, which were used for routes of both short and medium length. In 1976 the until then regionally dominating airline finally faced competition, as many Austrian airline passengers began using the Yugoslavian airline Adrian Airways, which had opened a new airport in Maribor, thereby providing passengers from Styria and Carinthia with a cheap alternative. Austrian airlines, however, was not to be put off by its new competitor and was successful in further tightening and coordinating its destinations. As a result of this it was able to order more machines from the aeroplane manufacturer Douglas Santa Monica, California in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, when many airlines began to merge and coordinate to form international alliances, Austrian was one of the first to join the Qualifier-Group under the leadership of former Swiss Air. After a financial quarrel with the partner Swiss-Air at the end of the last millennium and the simultaneous takeover of the private Lauda Air in the Austrian Airline Group, to which other airlines such as the regional Tyrolean Airways belonged, the decision was taken to join the popular Star Alliance group. As a result of this strategically clever decision, Austrian developed into the market leader for flights in the eastern European region. Currently (July 2007), the airline’s fleet consists of a total of 42 Boeing and Airbus machines, transferring more than 10 million passengers every year to about 130 airports on all continents, serving cities such as Astana, Bangkok, Chicago, Cairo, Odessa, Sarajevo, Tokyo or Yerevan.