Austrian Airlines

✅ Trip Verified | Vienna to Sofia booked for 30 November. I got really disappointed today. My problem was realized one day before the flight. I feel as if I paid for service that I cannot use. I am really disappointed even though I realize that I made a mistake, but the company had all my information and it just took my money without trying to help me!

Not Verified | I have not yet even flown and the customer service is unacceptable. I have been begging to upgrade my cabin for weeks. When I booked (via United), I was not advised that upgrading to a different class of service would be virtually impossible. Not being familiar with Austrian Airlines terminology for cabins, I would have booked an upgrade initially but did not. Here is a customer offering to spend additional money on a flight and no one will take it. I can apparently only upgrade when I arrive at the connection, less then 2 hours before the flight when all upgraded seats will most likely be taken. The airline must be doing very well to turn down a request to hand over more cash.

✅ Trip Verified | Vienna to London. The flight was pretty well fully booked. Rather cramped seating, but at least I had a window seat. We were around 15 min late on departure and eventually arrived about 30 min late on scheduled ETA. Cabin crew were friendly enough, but the 'in flight meal' was frankly ridiculous. All that was on offer for this 90 min flight was either an apple or a chocolate bar, plus the usual drinks. I'd had to do some work in the Austrian Airlines business lounge at Vienna - and there'd been little to eat there either.

✅ Trip Verified | Amman to Vienna. Three words to describe this flight: cheap, cheap, cheap. The sad part is it is clear that it is not the flight but the airline that is the problem. We were crammed in like sardines. I like to work on the plane, but this is near impossible because there is no leg room between seats. No USB ports to charge your phone, no plugs to keep your laptop charged up, no TV screens to watch a movie (that's right, neither seatback or the old fashioned movie screens. Nothing). You can use their wifi to stream movies, but they expect you to pay for that. The worst was the food, it is good that at least they serve a meal (only one option) but it is likely that this is because their competitors do as well. I have never seen an airline meal that reeked of cheap like this one before. As far as I could tell, it had only four ingredients: A ton of salt, pasta cheese and turkey (the deli meat kind). They ran out of wine and beer by the meal time. I think I managed to get one of the last beers on the plane only because I had selected a seat close to the front. Just the week before, I flew British Airways from London to Amman in Economy. The food was seriously delicious (and culturally appropriate) not to mention that there were USB ports and seat back TVs in economy class. I would avoid Austrian in the future. My best guess is that the Lufthansa group has designated Austrian as their low budget carrier.

✅ Trip Verified | Amsterdam to Vienna. Austrian Airlines delayed again. I do not remember the last time that Austrian was on time. I recommend to fly with KLM on the route from AMS-VIE if you can. Last time I'm going with Austrian.

✅ Trip Verified | Toronto to Vienna via Amman. I have tried more than 15 different airlines in my life, including several trips on Austrian Airlines, and with no doubt it is the absolute worst (worse than economy airlines if I may articulate). It is difficult to know where exactly to start, but I'm going to make it brief: Their staff, on-board and ground, are rude and dishonest! They are careless and ignore customers' requests and objections! What can I say about their (trans-Atlantic) stale so-called breakfast: A muffin! You carry people over the ocean and feed them a stale muffin for breakfast after +8 hours of flying, +6 hours of them without food! Nothing else?! And without getting into their slightly-shorter-but-still-long-and-boring almost 5 hour flights with no entertainment and tiny seats where people are cramped like sardines. And one can never forget their globally infamous, greasy, revolting pasta that they serve on every single flight for lunch, dinner, and sometimes breakfast. I wish to never, ever travel with Austrian Airlines again and if for whatever reason I book and discover my booking is with your horrid airline I will do my best to change it.

✅ Trip Verified | Vienna to Venice. I often fly this route, this time on the flight OS521. What´s disappointing is that at check in it´s basically all self service. The help not always good, especially in the morning, where you will find many people. The flight is as usual, really on time, hostess are still smiling and they do a good job in a really short time.

✅ Trip Verified | Amsterdam to Vienna. I booked my flight two days prior departure, and chose the Economy classic, as I could choose my seat and check in one piece of luggage - but I was not able to choose my seat until my flight. I tried to call Austrian airlines but they never picked up, after 15-20 min in the line I gave it up. Unfortunately, my train to Amsterdam had a terrible delay so I was forced to just check in my suitcase and run to my gate, therefore i was lucky that I a window seat. At the check in counter, the gentleman, not from Austrian Airlines was really polite, but not so attentive to my items that I had. Once in the plane, the legroom and the space of the aircraft was good. As I was hungry and thirsty I was expecting at least a little sandwich/snack, but it was a chocolate bar with a soft drink, disappointing as the week before I flew with them for neither one hour, between vienna and Venice and we got a chocolate croissant. I understand that it was the last flight of the day, but they did not met my expectations. The captain was really nice when he was speaking at the microphone. I tried the Wifi as they promoted, but it never worked for me.

✅ Trip Verified | London to Bangkok via Vienna. I was very keen to try out the new premium economy product. Heathrow Terminal 2 (of which star alliance carriers use) is quite a pain to use, but there is high efficiency. I boarded the flight to Vienna, and sat in my pre-paid exit row seat, which cost a reasonable £20. However the person next to me was spreading his legs so I didn’t have the most comfortable flight. The flight attendants were courteous on this flight but service was slightly slow. I had preordered a schnitzel which tasted amazing, almost as if it came out of a fine dining restaurant. It felt very fine dining-There was even a tablecloth and it came with silverware and a cloth napkin! A good way to spend £12. As Austrian had cancelled my previous flight, I was rebooked onto an earlier one which made my connection in Vienna 7 hours, and I paid lounge access for the Austrian Lounge, which was a great place to spend a couple of hours. Turns out there was no time limit, when they asked me where I was flying to, they responded “oh, well you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the lounge!” Shower facilities lacking, the shower felt like an ibis hotel bathroom without any amenities (you could ask for razors or toothbrushes at reception) i was given priority boarding, and the cabin was less than half full. In fact, all of the solo travellers had seats next to them empty. I was sat in 10A, which I found out I didn’t like, as initially I thought getting the front row with a leg rest would be good, however the row behind me with only a footrest turned out to be much more comfortable. Recline was reasonable, and I think these seats are equivalent to regional business class seats. There was a physical partition between premium economy and economy but there weren’t any curtains drawn. The plane was 18 years old, and the cabin senior said that its refurbished every 2 years. I couldn’t find any way to fault the cabin crew, but rather, the airline. This aircraft was terribly understaffed. For the standard 14 crew it needed, only 9 were present. When I had finished my meal, the crew had only made it 3/4 of the way to feed the cabin. The meals were of good quality, pretty much business class quality but quantity lacking as I fell asleep still hungry. Breakfast was quite filling and tasted good, to supplement the small dinner. There were three options for each meal. Entertainment was fine, but the remote control is a very funny and confusing design, but the touch screen worked well, rendering it useless. As I took my own personal pillows on the flight however, The position underneath the armrest made me accidentally hit it a couple of times. The cabin senior was one of the best cabin crew I’ve met in a while. I cannot fault the crew at all. I cannot fault Austrian’s premium economy product and I’d agree that the extra price is worth paying for. However, if the airline could make improvements administratively, they would do very very well.

✅ Trip Verified | London to Dubrovnik via Vienna. Flight delayed in London and with short layover in Vienna making the connection was at risk. When asked onboard, flight attendants had no idea about connections. Shortly before landing advised gate number for connecting flight and simply said Run. Ended up making the connecting flight, however, my luggage missed connecting flight in Vienna as Austrian Airlines failed to tag it advising of connection, let alone this having a short connection time. Obviously airline knew where bag was when filing claim in Dubrovnik. Initial information was for luggage to arrive that night via Zagreb. Later had to find out bag was sent to Munich for a day before onward journey to Dubrovnik. As a result bag won't arrive at destination until more than 36 hours late, whereas sending it on the same flight a day later would've been faster and the sensible thing to do. What's worse is there's no-one to talk to, everything is just done via forms on their website, including any compensation claims. Terrible service and an airline to avoid at all cost!