AUSTRIAN Airlines has announced plans to swap aircraft types to increase capacity and to reduce the fleet’s age.

Beginning in August of this year, OS will begin receiving 17 Embraer 195 aircraft from Lufthansa Cityline who will be migrating to CRJ900s as part of the Eurowings master plan.

A future member of the Austrian fleet…..

The 17 ERJs will phase out the Fokkers currently in the fleet and will dramatically increase capacity.   Each ERJ will seat 120 passengers as compared to the 80-100 passengers that each Fokker could carry.

Additionally, the 17 ERJs were manufactured between 2009 and 2012 which in essence makes these planes nearly new as far as OS is concerned.  Compare that to the Fokkers who on average are 21 years old.    The ERJs also come with the metric of being 17% more efficient than the Fokkers they are replacing.

According to OS, the first ERJ to be delivered in August of this year will be used to help cross-train nearly 200 OS pilots and expectations are that the first ERJ in OS colors will enter passenger service in January 2016.