Air Kärnten was a Carinthian airline project launched in 2014 out of Klagenfurt that, despite announced scheduled and charter destinations, never reached actual flight operations and quietly disappeared again in 2015.
Foto: Carsten Steger · Lizenz: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Quelle: Wikimedia Commons
Ambitions without an Operating Licence
Founded in November 2014, based at Klagenfurt Airport with Ingo Hitzenhammer as managing director, Air Kärnten planned to operate a Bombardier CRJ200 leased through Cimber and a Fokker 100, alongside scheduled flights to London Southend and charter destinations such as Girona, Lisbon, Palma de Mallorca, Naples, Rhodes and Kos. Because several Austrian travel agencies declined to sell the flights without a valid operating licence, the company at one point even considered launching as a virtual airline without its own air operator’s certificate.
Cancelled before the First Flight
On 31 March 2015, Air Kärnten cancelled its London Southend route for lack of demand, having received only nine bookings. A few weeks before the planned first flights on 30 April 2015, the website went offline, the flights disappeared from Klagenfurt Airport’s schedule, and the project ended without a single aircraft ever taking off for Air Kärnten.
Further reading: Austrian Aviation History
Sources (Selection)
Part of the Austrian Aviation History section. An independent, private history project with no connection to Austrian Airlines AG or the Lufthansa Group.