> As an Ango Austrian Society we should perhaps take note of just how
> hard it is actually to travel between the UK and Austria. Outside
> London, Austria becomes one of the remotest countries in Europe!

> It is curious that Austria - UK routes are so poorly served,
> especially from outside the London area. With the uncertainties over
> the future of Sky Europe and the route Manchester to Bratislava we are
> likely to see the situation worsen again. Manchester once had two
> airlines flying to Vienna - BA and Lauda - now there is none!

> There is a fairly good routing form Vienna to most major UK airports
> via Munich - but the Vienna to Munich leg is notoriously subject to
> delays. Although Munich airport is excellently run and every effort is
> made to enable passengers to access connections, sometimes things go
> wrong. Duesseldorf, Hamburg and if pushed - Frankfurt - all offer
> oportunities for connecting flights (though Frankfurt demands an
> additional security check with resultant queuing and UK passengers are
> isolated at a gate in a crowded basement with no facilties - it is a
> herding cattle philosophy at Frankfurt).

> Swiss via Zurich is just about the worst imaginable experience. It
> begins with an inability to check in online because of the
> inadequacies of the Swiss computer system. This is further exacerbated
> by the fact that in Vienna they are also unable to print a boarding
> pass for a flight out of Zurich. Ask the kindly Lufthansa counter
> staff and they will phone thorugh and check you in from Zurich by
> phone but still you have no boarding pass. They will also tell you
> they get several complaints a day about Swiss check in. In Vienna
> don't try to use the machines as they don't work with Swiss, you have
> to join one of those interminable queues instead.

> Further once in Zurich, long queues for passport control and the
> demand to repeat security procedures with queues backed up on
> staircases and escalators, makes the whole process nightmarish. One
> simply cannot recommend anyone routing through Zurich flying to or
> from Vienna and going out of Schengen. Flying via London is always
> miserable because of the perils of Heathrow - but it is particularly
> dismal if your connecting flight is with BMI outward as they will not
> check your luggage through unless you have a single through ticket.
> Flying into UK, Austrian are much more helpful and will check luggage
> through to any UK provincial airport. But depart with BMI and you have
> to allow an hour in Heathrow to collect luggage and then time to
> transfer and check in. In short - travelling to Vienna from the UK
> outside London can be an all-day journey.

> Yet Manchester airport has flights to almost every major European city
> - and certainly to the capitals - although Vienna is impossible, you
> can easily fly to Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and every major German
> city.

> Vienna is the cultural capital of Europe - maybe it says more about
> the UK than about Austria that actually getting there is such a
> challenge!

> Austrian Airlines offer excellent links to Eastern Europe - and a
> superb daily flight to Cyprus - a great alternative to charters, but
> until we can get some decent flights into Vienna the market remains
> closed to the UK. Even London to Vienna is at best, satisfactory, with
> some new airbuses, but some flights are operated by Tyrollean with
> relatively small aircraft making the flight pretty cramped and
> uncomfortable.

> So, why not turn to rail? Well Austrian railways have just stopped
> their overnight car service to and from Duesseldorf. The only services
> out of Vienna now operate to Italy and the Balkans or internally to
> Feldkirch. There is now no overnight train to Austria from the Channel
> or even form Paris or Brussels. So Eurostar is not much help either.

> Basically Austria is pretty isolated from the west - and try getting
> on the Munich - Salzburg motorway any summer weekend and you won't
> find that a happy experience either. From the East, oddly enough the
> links are better - direct flights to most major East European cities,
> direct rail out to Ukraine, Poland, Serbia, Roumania and Bulgaria,
> plenty of trains to Italy, cheap flights to Roumania and Italy - as
> well as all the usual holiday hot spots.

> So my fellow members - should we not campaign to open up routes to
> Austria? Or maybe we should maintain the status quo - keep it the most
> difficult country in Europe to access from UK - and hence keep it to
> ourselves!