Vienna International Airport
international airport serving Vienna, Austria
Vienna Airport (IATA: VIE, ICAO: LOWW) is an international airport serving Vienna, the capital of Austria. It is located in Schwechat, 18 km (11 mi) southeast of central Vienna and 57 kilometres (35 mi) west of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Its official name according to the Austrian Aeronautical Information Publication is Wien-Schwechat Airport. It is the country's largest airport and serves as the hub for Austrian Airlines as well as a base for low-cost carrier Ryanair and since April 2025 also for leisure airline Condor. It is capable of handling wide-body aircraft up to the Airbus A380. The airport features a dense network of European destinations as well as long-haul flights to Asia, North America and Africa.
History
Early years
On 27 December 1985, the El Al ticket counter was attacked by Abu Nidal, a Palestinian terrorist organisation that simultaneously conducted a terrorist attack at Fiumicino Airport in Rome.
Flughafen Wien AG, one of the few publicly traded airport operators in Europe, was privatised in 1992. The state of Lower Austria and the City of Vienna each hold 20% of the shares, the private employee participation foundation holds 10%, with the remaining 50% held privately. The shares used to be part of the Austrian Traded Index but were removed in September 2017.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Vienna International Airport” is international airport serving Vienna, Austria. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Vienna, International and Airport, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “international airport serving Vienna, Austria” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q32999. VIAF identifies the subject as 153871756. The Library of Congress control number is nb2010004656. Authority coordinates are 48.110, 16.570. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1985, 1992 and 2017.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Vienna International Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Vienna International Airport primary sources, Vienna International Airport archive and Vienna research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Vienna International Airport”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Vienna International Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.