Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) has confirmed it is to replace its out going fleet of Fokker Aircraft (Woensdrecht) with Embraer (EMB, São José dos Campos U.E. Stumpf International) Regional Jets sourced from fellow Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) subsidiary, Lufthansa CityLine (CL, Munich). On the formal approval of the airline's supervisory board, Austrian says beginning this autumn, it will add seventeen CityLine E195s with the switch expected to be complete by the end of 2017.
“We spent a long time considering which option would be the best solution for Austrian Airlines," Jaan Albrecht, CEO of Austrian Airlines, said. "The Embraer jets are an excellent and well-established aircraft. As you know, we also recently took a look at the Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) CSeries. We ultimately decided in favour of the [Lufthansa] Group solution. It enables us to begin the fleet renewal program this year."
Austrian, which operates fifteen Fokker 100s and six Fokker 70s, added that at this point in time, it has not yet been decided whether it will receive additional medium-haul jets in the future. In the interim, the airline says it is in the process of finalizing details pertaining to the finance of the aircraft.
Lufthansa CityLine will replace the EMB-195s with CRJ900s to be transferred from Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf).
