News

The first direct flight from Philadelphia landed at Václav Havel Airport Prague on Friday, as American Airlines resumed the route after a break of more than six years caused by the Covid pandemic.

On the occasion of the renewed connection, Finance Minister Alena Schillerová said Czechia now wants to secure more direct long-haul routes from Prague, including to Shanghai and Delhi. She said expanding intercontinental connections is one of the government’s priorities as the sole shareholder of Prague Airport.

The Philadelphia route is currently scheduled to operate until October 5. Prague Airport expects more than 57,000 passengers to use the connection during this year’s summer season.

Austria will continue border checks with Czechia, but controls have now been moved further into border areas and are no longer causing major disruption for tourists or cross-border commuters, Czech Interior Minister Lubomír Metnar said after talks with his Austrian counterpart Gerhard Karner on Friday.

Austria introduced checks on its border with Czechia in October 2023 in an effort to curb illegal migration. Although Austrian media speculated late last year that the controls could end, Vienna later extended them for another six months and announced a broader border security strategy covering the wider frontier region.

Several other European Union countries, including Germany, have also maintained internal border checks in response to illegal migration. Germany has controlled its borders with all neighbouring countries, including Czechia, since October 2023.

Representatives of Sudeten Germans and two of the so-called “Winton children” joined a Holocaust memorial ceremony at Brno’s main railway station on Thursday. The event, held at Platform 5, from where Jewish transport trains departed during World War Two, opened this year’s Meeting Brno festival and the annual Sudeten German congress, taking place in Czechia for the first time.

Around 500 people attended the ceremony, including about 100 protesters opposed to the visit of Sudeten German descendants. Sudeten German leader Bernd Posselt spoke in support of European unity, condemned nationalism and stressed the importance of learning from the past.

Among those attending were Eva Paddock and Milena Grenfell-Baines, who were rescued from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as children by British humanitarian Nicholas Winton, who organised trains to Britain and helped find foster families for hundreds of mostly Jewish children. Together with Winton’s son Nick, they spoke about the importance of dialogue and reconciliation.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has thanked Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and Prague medical staff in a post on X for accepting an American doctor who may have been exposed to Ebola in Congo.

The doctor was flown to Prague overnight and is being kept in isolation at Bulovka University Hospital after the U.S. Embassy asked whether he could remain in Czechia until the end of the incubation period. According to the hospital, the 46-year-old man is not showing any symptoms.

U.S. television network NBC reported that the man works for the Christian missionary organisation Serge and had been serving at a hospital in eastern Congo’s Ituri province, where an Ebola outbreak has been reported.