Australian Airlines Eastern Europe package
 

I was wondering if anyone has used this Australian Airlines package and can share their experience with it? The package is for Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, including rountrip air transportation from the States, three nights of hotels at each city, and 2nd class one way rail transportation between the cities? Thank you.

Are you sure that isn't Austrian Airlines?

I recently had the pleasure of flying on Austrian Airlines and thought they did a really good job. But I can't speak to your possible package.

Didn't Australian Airlines (a domestic carrier in that big empty mass of desert a bit to the left of New Zealand) go more or less bust a couple of years ago?

Austrian Airlines, OTOH (the national carrier for the small country next to Slovenia that likes to pretend Hitler was German) is very much alive, well and flying to everywhere in central and eastern Europe.

Know nothing about its packages, but the airline is consistently competent. Most importantly, a HUGE proportion of its revenue comes from getting people to connect at Vienna between what we used to call West and Eastern Europe. FlannerUK Global Enterprises plc depends heavily on Austrian to keep going: we've never missed a connection, however tight, with them, or found its people anything other than charming - and usually find it beats even the ex-communist airlines on price.

I also don't have any package experience with Austrian, but (while still chuckling :-) ) agree completely with flanneruk's remarks about Austrian Airlines.
I do, too, like their standard of service and reliability.

flanneruk, you would have to be a Pom! so it is no suprise that you have got all your facts wrong.For the record it was Ansett Airlines that went bust a few years ago. Australian Airlines is part of the Qantas group and has nothing to do with Austrian Airlines and it doesn't offer those packages. Well not to us Aussies anyway.
That "big mass of desert" is a bit much! We will keep that in mind when we thrash you Poms for the Ashes next cricket season. Fair Dinkum!

A big seller in Vienna-
A T-shirt imprinted with the following

"No Kangaroos in Austria"

Australian Airlines is indeed Qantas' budget overseas airline servicing Asian points (ie Phuket, Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong) to Australia, that bit to the top of the desert to the left of New Zealand which is about the size of USA excluding Alaska; nothing to do with tiny Austria. Ansett Airlines went belly-up about 4 years ago after being sold to New Zealand Airlines.

Some years ago Rupert Murdoch and one of his mates decided that it would be fun to play with an airline for a while, used it as a cash cow, then sold it to the Kiwis, who it seems could hardly beieve their luck and so decided not to bother with all that tedious due diligence stuff. It was a costly oversight, not least for Ansett's loyal staff.

Now, closer to the subject, from today's Sydney Morning Herald, which despite a deplorable 50-word sentence is worth quoting:

'Aussies Pull Art Depicting Queen, Leaders'

- From the website of the authoritative American Broadcasting Corporation, one of many to use an Associated Press headine that shifted the Austrian capital Vienna down under, atop an article last week about an art project depicting a nude Queen Elizabeth, George Bush and Jaques Chirac in a menage a trois.

And having said that, I've just realised that I myself kicked off with a 57-word sentence. I needed to say that before someone else did.