Austral Reviews
Austral Reviews
Austral is a French airline with its headquarters at Roland Garros Airport in Sainte-Marie, Réunion, France. The airline’s main base of flight operations is Roland Garros Airport. It operates scheduled services from Réunion to metropolitan France, South Africa, Thailand, India and a number of destinations in the Indian Ocean. The company has 900 employees.
Austral was created in December 1974 by local businessman Gérard Ethève. It was Réunion’s first commercial airline, known as Réunion Air Services (RAS). By August 1977 RAS had started regional services from Sainte-Marie to Mayotte with a 32-seat Hawker Siddeley HS 748 turboprop. RAS became Air Réunion in December, 1986. In October 1990 Sematra, a company 46% owned by the local councils of Réunion with the remaining shares owned by banks and other private partners, purchased Air Réunion. A month later, Air Réunion became Austral. In April 2012, Austral was unable to pay for a new 777-200LR awaiting delivery. The company is looking to sell on the plane instead of taking delivery. Following this development, Austral announced in May 2012 that it would defer or cancel its order for 2 Airbus A380s, with a decision to be made by the end of June 2012.
Austral offers three classes of service: Club Austral, Classe Confort and Classe Loisirs, which corresponds to Business, Premium economy and Economy classes, respectively.
