Austrian Airlines
Austrian flag carrier airline

Austrian Airlines (often shortened to Austrian or AUA) is the flag carrier of Austria and a subsidiary of Lufthansa, the flag carrier of Germany. The airline is headquartered on the grounds of Vienna International Airport in Schwechat, Austria, where it also maintains its hub. As of September 2026, the airline operates an average of around 320 daily flights to and from more than 120 destinations. It is a member of Star Alliance.
Air Austria and Austrian Airways merged to form the airline in 1957, but its history dates back to the founding of Austrian Airways in 1923. Throughout much of the company's existence, it was a state-owned entity. On 31 March 1958, the airline performed its scheduled service, flying a leased Vickers Viscount from Vienna to Zürich and London; it subsequently purchased its own Viscount fleet. On 18 February 1963, Austrian ordered its first jet-powered airliner, the Sud Aviation Caravelle. It subsequently introduced various models and derivatives of the Douglas DC-9 jetliner; by the end of 1971, Austrian was an all-jet operator. During the 1980s, it introduced the DC-9-80, otherwise known as the McDonnell Douglas MD-80, to its fleet.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Austrian Airlines” is austrian flag carrier airline. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Austrian, Airlines and flag, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q781770. VIAF identifies the subject as 226456844. Authority coordinates are 48.121, 16.559. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 1957, 1923 and 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “Austrian Airlines” 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.