Austrian airports don’t have counters for passengers who meant to fly to Australia

False claims that there’s a help desk in Vienna Airport for passengers who accidentally travel to Austria rather than Australia are circulating on Facebook and Threads. 

One post, shared 33,000 times on Facebook, says: “If you’re having a bad day, just remember that the airport in Vienna has a counter for people who flew to Austria instead of Australia.” 

The same claim about nearby Salzburg Airport went viral last year. As we pointed out at the time, the claim appears to have come from a photo, which a post on Threads has shared, showing a sign that says: “Sorry, this is Austria not Australia! Need help? Please press the button.” 

Several photos of the sign and the claim have been circulating online for years. One example includes a picture of the ‘button’ to press if you’ve ended up in the wrong destination. The earliest photo of the sign we could find appeared in a 2016 blog. 

However, the sign does not refer to a genuine help desk. In fact, as one post on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointed out when an image of the sign went viral last October, the photo appears to show a billboard above a luggage carousel.

Similarly, a closer look at the sign shows smaller text at the bottom that says: “Commend provides Security and Communication. From Salzburg to the rest of the world. Even for the most unlikely of situations”, followed by a link to the company’s website. 

Commend describes itself as a “large, globally recognised player providing Integrated Intercom Systems”. 

A spokesperson for Commend International told Full Fact in 2023 that the photo shows an advert for the company that had previously been at Salzburg Airport. 

They said: “The aim of this advertisement was to use the well-known confusion between Australia and Austria as an occasion to present an emergency situation story that our Austrian company knows how to solve by means of the technical competence of emergency call columns. This was purely an advertising billboard and not a live demo application where one could really have made an emergency call.” 

Salzburg Airport confirmed in a post on Facebook in October 2023 that there isn’t a switch for passengers who mistake Austria for Australia and it has never existed, but added that it was a “genius advertising idea” from Commend International. Vienna Airport confirmed to Full Fact that “there is no such counter at Vienna Airport”.

You can read more about how to tell whether images are what they say they are in our blog post here.

Image courtesy of SZGwebmaster