Time and again, airlines announce new routes, only to be quietly canceled before the first flight. Or they're canceled after just a few rotations. The second case occurred with Air Albania on the Tirana-Vienna route, where the new route was canceled after just three rotations.
Air travel between Austria and Albania is considered highly competitive, as several providers regularly operate this route. At the same time, visiting friends and relatives passengers are considered extremely price-conscious and are not afraid to switch to long-distance buses from Flixbus and small local providers if ticket prices are too high, even if this significantly increases travel times. Low-cost airlines like Ryanair and Wizzair know only too well that their main competitor on such Southeast European routes is not Austrian Airlines, but Flixbus and its competitors.
Unfavorable flight days with fierce competition
All the more surprising, then, was Air Albania's relatively short-notice announcement that it would be flying twice weekly between Vienna and Tirana starting mid-February 2025. The flight days were even more incomprehensible, as Thursdays and Sundays are of little use to weekly commuters, visitors to Vienna, and even tourists, unless they want to take a day off on Fridays. It was hardly surprising, then, that Air Albania experienced disastrous capacity utilization on the three flights it operated. Even the higher ticket prices compared to the competition didn't help. The advance booking figures, as one hears behind closed doors with the addition "please don't quote me by name," were de facto nonexistent.
Why launch a new route and be traditionally celebrated by Vienna Airport when you already knew before the inaugural flight that the route wasn't economically viable, as you were only able to secure very few bookings? After just three rotations, Air Albania's management pulled the plug. The Vienna adventure cost a lot of money, as not a single rotation was economically successful. Reliability and predictability for passengers look completely different, as the website still advertises the "new Vienna route," which is no longer operated. At least: they're no longer selling tickets.
Costs for rebooking within narrow limits
Passengers have the right to alternative transportation with another airline or alternative means of transport, even if the airline notifies them of the cancellation at least 14 days before the scheduled departure. Adhering to the 14-day deadline only affects whether or not additional compensation—between €250 and €600, depending on the distance—must be paid. For Air Albania, the costs for rebooking passengers on the canceled route are likely to be limited, as it was difficult to sell tickets.
Does it make strategic sense to choose a route where the low-cost airlines Ryanair and Wizzair are engaged in a price war? The pink carrier currently offers two rotations per week, and from mid-May, it will initially increase to four rotations, and a few weeks later, to five. Competitor Ryanair already flies daily. These two low-cost carriers primarily target point-to-point passengers, while competitor Austrian Airlines predominantly serves transfer passengers on this route. In a sense, the three carriers have divided the market among themselves, although there is still a fierce price war.
Not accepted by the market
Air Albania, with two rotations per week, which, moreover, could only be used to a very limited extent for weekend trips and were priced higher than those of its low-cost competitors, seemed to be a bit of a nuisance. The market clearly didn't take to the offer, and management had to pull the emergency brake after just three rotations.
But didn't they already know before the inaugural flight that the Tirana-Vienna-Tirana route would be an economic disaster due to a severe lack of bookings, that they should have canceled it for economic reasons even before the celebratory inaugural flight? Of course they knew that, but as so often happens, they probably speculated that everything would somehow work out and bookings would pick up. That didn't happen, and that's not at all surprising: No one from Air Albania wanted to answer this question or say anything official about the botched Vienna flight. Only this much: They're reserving the possibility of a comeback, but how, what, when, where, is still unknown.
Given that Wizz Air will increase its weekly rotations to five times a week, and Ryanair and Austrian Airlines also operate frequently on this route, it is more likely that Wizz Air will eventually fly daily than that Air Albania will attempt a Vienna comeback and then be able to maintain its long-term commercial success on this route. Competition with Flixbus and local providers from Albania is particularly fierce in point-to-point travel, and quite a few travelers tend to choose overland if the ticket with Ryanair, Wizz Air, or Austrian Airlines is slightly more expensive than the long-distance bus. Alternatively, there is also the option of organizing a carpool with friends, acquaintances, and relatives and splitting the car costs. Air Albania, too, has had to learn that patriotism is lacking on routes where people travel frequently and therefore want to spend as little money as possible. Only the price and travel times that suit their needs count, not where the provider is headquartered.
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