From CNN:

“Austria's flagship airline is replacing one of its flights with a more frequent train service, in order to meet the environmental criteria of its recent government bailout.”

“The company will no longer fly between capital city Vienna and Salzburg, operating a rail service instead.”

Why why why?

“As part of its recent €600 million government aid package, the airline is required to cut its domestic emissions by 50% by 2050 and to end flights where there is a direct train connection to the airport that takes "considerably less than three hours."

Super Duper! (That’s German for “Super Duper”, by the way.)

And this is no minor teensy-weensy change:

“From July 20, there will be up to 31 direct train services a day between the Vienna International Airport and Salzburg's central station, up from three rail connections per day, the airline said.”

From three to thirty-one trains per day!

Epic.

The elephant in the room: What Austrian Airlines chooses to do with the to-be-liberated airport slots. Replacing domestic services with slots to far away places would simply transfer CO2-emissions from “counted locally” to “Haha, let’s not count them!”

Yep: International flight CO2 emissions are simply not counted in any country’s totals at the moment.

There is plenty of pressure to change this business-as-usual madness though.