The Italian regional airline SkyAlps has discontinued its direct flight connection between Linz and Düsseldorf. Most recently, only two flights per week were offered, which was rather suboptimal for business travelers.
The discontinuation of Düsseldorf flights is a major setback for Linz Airport, as the 2024/25 winter flight schedule has shrunk to just two scheduled destinations: London Stansted and Frankfurt am Main. Düsseldorf, which was last served by Skyalps with de Havilland Dash 8-400, is no longer included.
Too little frequency for business travelers
In the past, the route was mainly used by business travelers, which is why Austrian Airlines had offered it twice a day for many years. A de Havilland Dash 8-400 was stationed at the Upper Austrian airport for this purpose. The Lufthansa Group later decided that Eurowings should take over this route, along with Stuttgart-Graz and Düsseldorf-Graz.
However, the flight times and the aircraft used proved to be unsuitable. The Eurowings flights offered little benefit to the core target group, as the double daily service was no longer available. Instead, flights were only operated a few times a week. So the inevitable happened: Eurowings gave up the Düsseldorf-Linz and Stuttgart-Graz connections due to lack of profitability.
For Linz Airport, Sykalps turned out to be a real stopgap measure, as the company had already been operating three rotations per week between Düsseldorf-Linz-Düsseldorf and Bolzano-Düsseldorf-Bolzano. Despite intensive efforts on the part of the airport, which even temporarily included free parking, it has obviously not been possible to make the route a success again. There may be various reasons for this, but recently two weekly rotations are far too few for business travelers.
No communication between airline and airport
There is also a completely different circumstance: Skyalps is known for demanding a certain guaranteed purchase. In the case of Linz, it was not the airport itself that complied with this request, but an unnamed third-party company. Ultimately, Skyalps was probably an expensive but ultimately not permanent undertaking for Upper Austria. At one point, the stationing of a de Havilland Dash 8-400 at Linz Airport was even discussed, but nothing came of it. On the contrary: the Düsseldorf route was initially reduced and has now been completely discontinued without any announcement to the public.
Skyalps has since completely removed this connection from the reservation system. The PDF winter flight schedule for Linz Airport, which already only has two destinations - Frankfurt am Main and London Stansted - no longer shows the discontinued Skyalps route. A possible comeback at a later date is not ruled out in principle, but there are no concrete signs of this - at least not at the moment. The South Tyrol-based carrier wants to focus - for the time being - on routes from its home base in Bolzano and from Mostar.
and 