The South Tyrolean airline Skyalps intends to operate numerous scheduled routes with de Havilland Dash 8-400 on behalf of Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines in the future. Owner Josef Gostner explained this in an interview with a South Tyrolean daily newspaper. However: Neither Austrian Airlines nor its parent company Lufthansa want to confirm the published statements.

According to Josef Gostner's statements, Linz Airport would play a larger role in Skyalps' route network in the future. The Upper Austrian airport in Linz has been served for a few weeks now. The destinations of Bolzano, Vienna and Frankfurt am Main will be added in the future. The connection to the home base in South Tyrol on its own account, the Austrian capital for the AUA and to the crane hub should be on behalf of Lufthansa. Flights to Friedrichshafen will also begin from there.

AUA and Lufthansa do not confirm

But that's not all: Skyalps owner Josef Gostner also announced that they would serve the domestic routes from Vienna to Graz, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck for Austrian Airlines. This is what the entrepreneur said in an interview with the daily newspaper “Alto Adige”. There is at least a not unfounded assumption that the statements were not coordinated with the potential partners, because both Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines expressly do not want to confirm a cooperation with Skyalps.

Neither Austrian Airlines nor Lufthansa have commented on what form of cooperation with Skyalps is possible. In particular, the question is whether the South Tyrolean company will “take over” the routes on its own account and a codeshare agreement will be concluded so that the flights can continue to be used as feeders or whether it will be a classic wet lease in which the AUA or the crane bears the economic risk, were not answered.

“As part of an expanded cooperation strategy in the regional segment, we are currently looking at various possibilities and evaluating the options. However, there is no decision and no concrete timetable. There are discussions with various possible partners,” said a spokeswoman for Austrian Airlines.

AUA announced possible wet leases “before Corona”.

It is noteworthy that Gostner explicitly mentioned the Linz-Vienna route. This has been discontinued for many years and was the first domestic route that Austrian Airlines recently gave up and shifted to rail as part of its cooperation with ÖBB. The question of whether the Skyalps owner may have accidentally confused Linz with Salzburg and whether Vienna-Salzburg could be making a comeback was also not answered.

The otherwise extremely talkative Josef Gostner did not want to answer questions that arose after the interview published in “Alto Adige” based on statements from Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa. Therefore, it cannot be conclusively assessed whether the published statements are a kind of ingratiation for possible cooperation or whether only small details still need to be negotiated and the South Tyrolean entrepreneur has been rushed out in the regional media a little early. Neither Lufthansa nor Austrian Airlines want to confirm the collaboration publicly announced by Gostner and therefore neither the routes mentioned.

However, it cannot be completely dismissed that both Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines could look for turboprop aircraft on wet lease. When the AUA announced the impending and now completed phase-out of the de Havilland Dash 8-400, the then company boss Alexis von Hoensbroech said that one could imagine using rented turboprops on domestic routes. The issue was overshadowed, among other things, by the Corona pandemic and, due to the crisis KV, it would probably not have been well received by the union and the works council if their own staff received reduced wages and at the same time hired a subcontractor.

Skyalps does not (yet) have an IOSA safety audit

But it is also a fact that domestic air traffic has been gradually thinned out by Austrian Airlines. Using the example of Klagenfurt, this is supposedly due to weak demand. However, this is denied by the airport and the Chamber of Commerce because they say that the flights to Vienna are mostly full. The Embraer 195 machine type is economically complicated for the short domestic route due to operating costs that are higher than those of the ATR72-600 or de Havilland Dash 8-400. In Germany, Lufthansa has a similar problem on the Friedrichshafen-Frankfurt am Main route. Skyalps obviously knows this too and is therefore trying to present itself as a “solution” and at the same time want to land a coveted codeshare agreement and wet lease orders.

One circumstance that speaks against the cooperation is the following: For the Lufthansa Group, when selecting codeshare and/or wetlease partners, it plays a major role that an IOSA safety audit certificate is available. This makes audits easier because many OS/LH flight connections are also available via Star Alliance partners. Skyalps has not yet received this audit. The Lufthansa Group is strict when selecting its subcontractors and does not normally enter into business relationships with carriers that do not have an IOSA. Skyalps would therefore have to undergo this review as quickly as possible, although it is completely unclear whether it will then receive the certificate or not.