High Life Reisen Rebuilds Altenrhein Charter Program for Summer 2027 With Helvetic Airways, Private Wings and FROST, Adds Tivat
Why It MattersPeoples Airline's exit from charter shows how a regional carrier's fleet change can push tour operators toward small turboprops and mixed carriers at runway- and noise-constrained airports.
High Life Reisen, an Austrian tour operator based in Götzis, has announced its charter flight program from St. Gallen-Altenrhein for the 2027 summer season. The restructuring was needed because regional airline Peoples Airline will discontinue its own charter flights as part of a fleet conversion and focus mainly on scheduled services between Altenrhein and Vienna with smaller aircraft. The two companies had cooperated since 2014, serving Sardinia, Mallorca, Pula and Ibiza with Embraer 170 jets, a type Peoples Air Group is phasing out. High Life Reisen says it has kept almost all of its point-to-point tourist connections from the Lake Constance airport by expanding existing partnerships and adding new ones with European airlines. Managing director and owner Michael Nachbaur said securing replacement capacity required intensive negotiations with several airlines, and the airport's 1,500-metre runway and regional noise abatement rules limit which passenger aircraft can operate there.
For Mallorca, Swiss airline Helvetic Airways will fly a 105-seat Embraer E190-E2 every Tuesday from June to October 2027, the largest aircraft in the program. German airline Private Wings will serve northern Sardinia (Olbia) on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with extra frequencies in late summer and autumn, using 32-seat Dornier 328-100 turboprops, and will also operate flights to Elba, Ibiza and the Croatian island of Brač with the same type. Charter company FROST will fly a 50-seat Saab 2000 to southern Sardinia (Cagliari) on Sundays.
A new destination, Tivat in Montenegro, will be added every Sunday from May 2027, operated by Private Wings with a Dornier 328-100. In peak summer months total capacity from Altenrhein will reach up to 320 seats per week, for a catchment area covering mainly Vorarlberg, the eastern Swiss cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau and Appenzell, and Liechtenstein. The tour operator will also keep using Peoples Airline's scheduled Vienna flights for city-break and combination packages; Peoples has announced an increase to three flights daily, and two on Sundays, with the Dornier 328-100.
