The Chamber of Commerce and the Graz and Salzburg airports have presented a study prepared by Höffinger Solutions that questions the previous statements made by Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) regarding the shift of domestic flights to rail. The study comes to the conclusion that travelers do not want to take the train and would rather use their own car due to the lack of alternatives by air.

Gewessler wants to ban flights within Austria for supposed climate protection reasons. Even before she took office, the Linz-Vienna feeder flights were canceled and transferred to rail as part of a cooperation between AUA and ÖBB. Later it also hit Salzburg-Vienna, but both the federal railways and Austrian Airlines make the passenger numbers a real state secret. Everything should be going great and the passengers would be happy with it, according to the official version.

However, a completely different version was already heard from circles of the economic chambers of Salzburg and Upper Austria at the beginning of the “AUA flights on rail”. Business travelers in particular would not board the trains, but would instead drive to Munich and Vienna and fly from there. This would also be to the detriment of the Lufthansa Group, as many would use cheaper alternatives. Private travelers also seem to have a lot of inhibitions about the Air Rail product because they are more concerned about missing the flight if the train is delayed. So your own car serves as a means of getting there, although many Upper Austrians and Salzburgers tend to drive to Munich rather than Vienna.

Holders of the climate ticket are exempt from this. Graz Airport is feeling the effects here, because there is also a direct Flixbus connection to Vienna Airport, which is mainly used by non-network card holders. It turns out that these groups of people then switch to cheap flights from Vienna because they are largely flexible when it comes to getting to the airport and do not have to rely on Austrian Airlines.

Gewessler's plans do not correspond to customer behavior

However, climate ticket users are only a very small part of the passenger potential that is being shifted from air to land. The vast majority choose to use their own car, which, from the perspective of the federal state airports and the Chamber of Commerce, simply cannot be the point of banning domestic flights, because this does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but rather increases them. Leonore Gewessler therefore seems to have not thought through the effects of her planned ban on domestic flights or to have not taken into account the fact that passengers would simply switch to the train.

This should also be clearly visible in Styria. There, the planned discontinuation of the Graz-Vienna short flight route is linked to the completion of the Semmering Base Tunnel if the train journey between Graz and Vienna takes less than three hours. Changing trains only works where there is a train service that meets travel needs, such as from Linz to Vienna. Ideally, flights and trains complement each other. However, the railway cannot replace the regions' flight connections to the Vienna hub as needed.

Environment and Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler made it a condition of the AUA rescue package at the beginning of the Corona crisis in 2020 that all domestic flights on routes that could be covered by train “well” under three hours would be stopped. The evaluation study now available from Höffinger Solutions examines whether the steering effects expected at the time and formulated in the Climate Protection Ministry's Aviation Strategy 2040+ have materialized and whether a "significant" proportion of the approximately 120.000 passengers who traveled by plane from Salzburg to their onward flight via Vienna in 2019 changed the train to Vienna. The answer is clearly negative. The vast majority drive to Munich Airport or fly to other connecting airports.

“A steering effect occurred, but not in the way the inventor intended,” says press spokesman Alexander Klaus from Salzburg Airport. “More than 90% of the previously up to 120.000 passengers per year on the Salzburg-Vienna flight route used the flight connection to fly further into the world from Vienna Airport. Around 10% of these passengers - mainly people who came directly from the city of Salzburg and the surrounding area - were point-to-point passengers and switched to rail. The majority of the remaining approximately 90% of passengers either switched to the car to Munich Airport or reached their desired destination via other hubs abroad, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Düsseldorf, Dubai, Amsterdam.” The Vienna hub is primarily for rural Salzburg districts and the many business travelers from the border area of ​​Germany lost importance. “The flight connection from Salzburg to Vienna existed for 60 years. The discontinuation represents lasting damage to Salzburg as a business and industrial location. It was not done for climate reasons, see shifting emissions to the roads, but out of pure dogmatism,” says Klaus.

Graz Airport: Similar scenario expected

“98% of passengers to Vienna are connecting passengers,” says Wolfgang Grimus, managing director of Graz Airport, fearing similar effects for his airport as soon as flights to Vienna are banned. “Passengers will either switch from Graz to other hubs such as Frankfurt, Munich or Amsterdam or fly directly from alternative airports such as Laibach. In any case, a large part of the added value will be relocated abroad if the flight route between Vienna and Graz has to be discontinued,” emphasizes Grimus.

“What makes matters worse is that the daytime connections from Vienna, which are important for business travelers, are no longer accessible for connecting passengers from the federal state airports or that it is no longer possible to travel home to the federal states in one day,” says Peter Malanik, Managing Director of AviationIndustry Austria. “So business travelers in particular will use foreign hubs, which often means a detour. “So people don’t fly less,” says Malanik. “Just as it makes ecological sense to ban flights, it is also economically absurd to mandate that flights be carried out by the state.”

Loss of connectivity

For WKÖ aviation chairman Günther Ofner it is clear: “The expected positive effects on CO2 emissions in Austria have not materialized.” In this context, Ofner notes that, according to the IEA and the Federal Environment Agency, aviation in Austria has a share of less than 0,2. 2% of total CO0,5 emissions. Across Europe the proportion is just over 2,7% and worldwide it is 2050%. “Nevertheless, aviation worldwide has set itself the goal of being CO2 neutral by 2. The hindrance to the intra-Austrian connection makes no relevant contribution to achieving this goal. What is more important is the rapid use of CO2-neutral alternative aircraft fuels. This brings immediately measurable COXNUMX savings. In order to accelerate the deployment, funding is also necessary in accordance with the EU recommendations,” says Ofner.”

In addition, the measure has a negative impact on the location, as study author Stefan Höffinger concludes: “A restriction on domestic flight routes leads above all to a loss of connectivity, which in turn has a negative impact on the attractiveness of Austria as a business location. This means that not only do the expected effects on climate protection not occur, but by switching to foreign hubs, additional added value within Austria is lost.” A ban on domestic flights is therefore not effective.