I am saying farewell to the fifth oldest airline in the world, as it is set to end its flight operations on Saturday, October 26, 2024; and I fondly remember when I was a passenger aboard at least one of its airplanes.
Saying Farewell To The Fifth Oldest Airline In The World.
The airline is Czech Airlines — or ČSA for short — and I remember being a passenger aboard an airplane that was operated by the airline on an overnight flight from Newark to Prague. I remember the flight being pleasant and being able to sleep a little bit in the seat in the economy class cabin. The food that was served was reasonably good. The one thing I remember the most, however, was looking at the in-flight magazine and trying to make some sort of sense of the Czech language. All of those accents placed on many characters in weird places had me thinking that this must be one of the more difficult languages to learn.
Founded on Saturday, October 6, 1923 and having commenced operations on Monday, October 29, 1923 with a flight from Prague to Bratislava, Czech Airlines would be in business for 101 years — but it is set to end its run quietly later this month.
Posted at the official Internet web site of the airline is the following message:
ATTENTION! Termination of OK Plus loyalty program by 26 October 2024.
The OK Plus loyalty program will be terminated in its current setup by 26 October 2024.
Mileage accrual and redemption of OK Plus miles remains unchanged till 26 October 2024. Utilization of miles for bonus tickets on Czech Airlines and our SkyTeam alliance partners is possible for flights not later than 26 October 2024.
OK Plus membership of all OK Plus members will be terminated by 26 October 2024 without replacement. If miles are not used by this date, they will be automatically deleted. Deleted miles cannot be used afterwards.
Czech Airlines officially became a full member of the SkyTeam Alliance on Wednesday, October 18, 2000. The financial performance of Czech Airlines had been so bad in recent years that the airline likely would have disappeared had the Smartwings Group not purchased a stake of 97.74 percent of the airline in 2018.
As part of the restructuring of the aviation business of the Smartwings Group, Czech Airlines will be repurposed as a holding company effective as of Sunday, October 26, 2024.
Final Boarding Call
At one time, Czech Airlines served locations in Europe, North America, and Asia. Now a veritable shadow of its former self, the airline currently only has two Airbus A320-200 airplanes remaining in its fleet.
Seeing a historic airline quietly go out of business is sad — but what else could have been done? The commercial aviation landscape in Europe had changed significantly over the years; and Czech Airlines simply had not adjusted well — especially after the 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to sealing the fate of the airline.
Unfortunately, I did not take photographs of the airplanes that were operated by Czech Airlines, as my experiences with the airline was before this weblog was launched — so I included a couple of general photographs that I took in Prague instead.
Have you flown as a passenger aboard an airplane that was operated by Czech Airlines?
Photograph ©2004 by Brian Cohen.
