Czech Airlines (ČSA) is the third oldest airline in Europe after the Dutch KLM and the Russian Aeroflot. But the present time only applies until Saturday evening.
The last ČSA flight from Paris is scheduled to land at Václav Havel Airport at 21:55. It will then cease to exist as an independent brand, ČSA aircraft will go under the QS code, which is used by Smartwings, on Sunday.
“As far as I know, the last flight on Saturday has been sold out for a long time and it was filled mainly with aviation enthusiasts and fans. There probably won’t be many ordinary passengers because it has been known for several months that it is the last flight. We will also have our reporter there,” he said Aktuálně.cz editor-in-chief of the specialist zdopravy.cz server Jan Sůra.
ČSA is another traditional brand that is disappearing in Central Europe. The Hungarian airline Malév already ended in 2012. According to Sůra, the development of the market in air transport is such that many smaller players, such as ČSA or Malév, cannot make a living. They have a chance only if they are part of the majority of the group – such an example is the cooperation between Austrian Airlines and Swiss.
The Polish airline LOT, which plans to expand, is in the complete opposite of Czech Airlines. This carrier has direct flights even to very distant destinations such as Los Angeles, Chicago or Tokyo.
“Poland is a bigger market, it has over 40 million inhabitants. Poles are scattered around the world, a large community lives in the United States and elsewhere, which adds to their long-haul fleet. And the Polish government helped LOT a lot during the pandemic. However, for ČSA covid was not the decisive factor blow, rather just such a point. The state’s inability to manage it destroyed the company,” says Jan Sůra.
Last year, LOT transported 10.3 million passengers, and it plans to grow to 16 million passengers by 2028. The aircraft park is to expand from 75 machines to 110. New destinations with direct flights from Warsaw will be, for example, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Hanoi, Osaka or Riyadh.
LOT was founded in 1928, five years after Czechoslovak Airlines. Hungarian Malév existed from 1946 to 2012. The Poles are also planning to build a new airport in Warsaw, which should have the capacity to handle more passengers. It is supposed to be the Eastern European equivalent of major world airports such as London’s Heathrow or Dubai.
The fate of the Polish and Czech air carriers is another item in the debate about how much Poland is ahead of the Czech Republic in terms of economic and overall development. This year, the country opened the entire 470-kilometer S3 highway from the Czech border to the Baltic. It is thus possible to reach this sea from the Czech Republic in less than five hours by car, but the connecting Czech highway D11 to Trutnov is still far from being completed.
Video: The last ČSA flight from Prague to Ostrava
He’s definitely done. The last ČSA flight from Prague to Ostrava