Landing Ban at Austrian Airports Extended from 10 to 18 Countries
In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Austria will reinforce the landing bans for aircraft from COVID-19 risk areas as of Thursday, 16 July. Thus, landing bans will apply to aircraft from the following countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Iran, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, United Kingdom and Ukraine.
Austria extends landing bans at Austrian airports to 18 countries. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / Danny Yu / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
While aircraft from eight countries and Lombardy (which has now been removed) were not allowed to land in Austria until now, the list now includes 18 countries according to a new regulation of the Ministry of Health as of Thursday, July 16.
So far the following 8 states were affected by the landing ban: Great Britain, Iran, Sweden, Belarus, Ukraine, China, Portugal and Russia.
Flights from these countries to Austria are still prohibited. In this respect, nothing will change for the time being.
A great blow to the international community based in Vienna is the huge extension of the ban to ten more states.
In addition, there is now a ban on flights from Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Egypt and the six countries of the Western Balkans, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia and Serbia.
As reported by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF, "significant effects on the reduced route network of Austrian Airlines can be expected: Current connections from Belgrade, Bucharest, Cairo, Podgorica, Sarajevo, Sibiu, Skopje, Sofia, Tirana and Varna to Vienna-Schwechat will have to be cancelled at least until the end of July."
There will be some exceptions, but they must be approved.
"We do not want there to be any risk", said Health Minister Anschober. "We want to intensify controls and take measures" in view of the increasing number of infections in the affected countries.
It would still be possible to enter Austria by land if one had a current coronavirus diagnosis or if one had been in home quarantine for two weeks.