AUA Chief in Conversation – “The Airport is Tight – We Need More Gates”

“Crown”: How is Austrian Airlines doing after the wage dispute, very high wage agreements and a very successful summer of travel?
Annette Mann: The wage dispute in our minds is over, the agreement did not improve our competitiveness, but we agreed to a three-year peace commitment until the end of 2026. Now we can focus on the substantive issues. You say it was a very good summer. There was demand, but unfortunately it was not as good because at the beginning of the summer we had many delays and cancellations. There were much more storms than last year. Unfortunately, we have a bottleneck in air traffic control again in many European countries. The crisis in the Middle East is also really causing us problems this year because we have good market shares in the Middle East, to and from Tel Aviv, Amman, Erbil and Tehran. Due to the security situation in the Middle East, we have to cancel these flights many times for several weeks, which gives us a loss of double-digit millions. So let’s call it mixed, but AUA is not in crisis.