Welcome Air
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| Founded | May 2000 | ||||||
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| Hubs | Innsbruck Airport | ||||||
| Fleet size | 1 | ||||||
| Destinations | - | ||||||
| Headquarters | Innsbruck, Austria | ||||||
| Key people | Helmut Wurm (CEO) | ||||||
| Website | welcomeair.com | ||||||
Welcome Air, officially Welcome Air Luftfahrt GmbH & Co KG, is an Austrian charter airline with its head office in Innsbruck. It is also the parent of air rescue company Tyrol Air Ambulance.
On 14 June 1995 Jakob Ringler, since 1983 one of the directors of Tyrolean Air Ambulance (founded 1963 as Aircraft Innsbruck), founded Welcome Air Luftfahrt GmbH.
Through a management buy out in 2000 Tyrolean Air Ambulance (renamed then Tyrol Air Ambulance), which had closely links to the local airline Tyrolean Airways as well as to the helicopter company "Heliair" (formerly "Aircraft Innsbruck"), became part of Jakob Ringler's "Welcome Air" after he took over the majority (in 2011 93,27% belonging to Welcome Air) On 22 May 2000 Welcome Air started its first flight with Do-328 from Innsbruck to Graz
In 2009 Welcome Air was taken over by Lions Air Group (Switzerland) which also taken over the majority of Air Alps. The umbrella company Welcome Aviation Group set up to merge the companies Tyrol Air Ambulance, Air Alps and Welcome Air and their head offices into one in Innsbruck.
In July 2011 Welcome Aviation Group announced a restructure and therefore Welcome Air will concentrate its activities on business & event charters and will end the year-round Innsbruck - Graz service, but continue the summer operations to Innsbruck/Graz-Olbia and Innsbruck-Nice for a while. Air Alps, which meanwhile ceased operations, concentrated its activities on the Italian schedule operations back then and Tyrol Air Ambulance on its ambulance operations. Meanwhile, Welcome Air ceased all remaining scheduled operations and concentrates entirely on offering European charter services.
In February 2015, Austrian Airlines announced the termination of their wetlease contract with Welcome Air for their Vienna - Linz flights from 31 March 2015. Austrian Airlines had started an airport rail link from Linz to Vienna only months before which was well received, resulting in the five daily flights reduction. Welcome Air subsequently announced a reduction in the fleet size.
Welcome Air offers non-scheduled charter services for business and leisure throughout Europe.
In earlier years, the airline also served the scheduled destinations listed below.
The Welcome Air fleet consists of the following aircraft (as of August 2016):
The airline previously operated a Dornier 328JET and two further Dornier 328 aircraft.
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Wikipedia