Austrian Airlines is expanding bilateral air traffic between Austria and Germany. The airline has been offering four daily flights between Graz and Frankfurt since last week. Lufthansa previously had responsibility for operating flight service on this route. Austrian Airlines has already added flight traffic between both Innsbruck and Salzburg to Frankfurt to its route network.

On balance, Austria’s red-white-red carrier operates up to 296 flights each week between Austria and Germany since March 27, 2016, including up to 119 flights from Austria’s federal provinces and 177 from the airline’s flight hub in Vienna. This includes flights from Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz, Salzburg and Vienna to Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart.

Austrian Airlines is also planning an enlargement of its fleet and the hiring of additional pilots within the context of its taking over flight operations for bilateral air traffic to Germany: This year Austria’s flag carrier will add two more Airbus A320 aircraft to its existing fleet of 29 Airbus planes or total fleet of 79 aircraft.

“In this connection, our personnel requirements for flight operations are increasing,” says Austrian Airlines CEO Kay Kratky. “On balance, we want to hire 160 new pilots and 400 new flight attendants.”

Austrian Airlines already began searching for 130 fully trained pilots, so-called “ready entries”, to be deployed in flying Dash, Airbus and Embraer aircraft. Applications can be submitted on the Jobs & Careers section of the Lufthansa Group Website. In addition, the red-white-red flag carrier also plans to hire 30 prospective pilots or so-called “ab initios” as of the middle of 2016, and train them in cooperation with Lufthansa Flight Training. The search for young pilots will concentrate on the Austrian market. Thus the initial figure of 100 additional pilots to be hired as announced at the beginning of the year has increased by 60 to a total of 160 cockpit employees. Austrian Airlines employed a total of 950 pilots at the end of 2015. The recruitment of new staff will increase this figure to about 1,030 pilots deducting fluctuation.

Moreover, Austrian Airlines is also hiring about 400 new flight attendants, of whom about 200 have not yet been recruited. The original figure of 200 new flight attendants announced at the beginning of the year will also rise to 400.

Austrian Airlines employed 2,030 flight attendants at the end of 2015. After taking account of employee turnover, this figure is expected to climb to about 2,260 flight attendants. Applications can be submitted here.

On balance, Austrian Airlines had a total staff of 5,984 employees as at December 31, 2015, more than half of whom are involved in flight operations.