Austrian Airlines Looking to Hire 600 New Employees

Austrian Airlines recently announced that it needs to expand its current staff by a total of 600 people in 2018 due to the expansion of the medium-haul fleet in the past year as well as the planned transfer of pilots to the Lufthansa Group.

“Austrian Airlines will continue to grow at the Vienna flight hub in spite of the current turbulences on our domestic market,” the airline’s CEO, Kay Kratky, said.

According to Kratky, Austrian Ailines is currently looking for about 200 pilots, 300 flight attendants and 100 employees in the fields of aircraft maintenance and ground handling.

This year the airline is planning another expansion step, namely the integration of another long-haul aircraft, a Boeing 777-200 jet, in its fleet. The Boeing 777 will offer room for 306 seats, 24 of which are in the new Premium Economy Class.

“It is planned to hire 150 employees just to operate this one new aircraft,” Kratky said.

The additional capacity will enable Austrian Airlines to expand its intercontinental route network. Starting May 15, 2018, the airline will resume flight service to Tokyo in Japan, and also plans to begin operating flights to Cape Town in South Africa as of October 27, 2018.

Austrian Airlines employed 6,914 people as at December 31, 2017, a rise of 7.2 percent or 464 employees compared to the previous year. The fleet of consisted of 83 aircraft at the end of 2017, including 72 short-haul and medium-haul jets (Bombardier Dash 8-400, Embraer 195, Airbus 320F) and eleven long-haul aircraft (Boeing 767 and 777). The integration of the twelfth long-haul aircraft in the Austrian Airlines fleet is scheduled for May 2018.

In 2017, close to 12.9 million passengers flew with Austrian Airlines, comprising a rise of 12.8 percent compared to 2016.