airberlin Confirms Summer Network Changes

airberlin has used the International Tourism Fair (ITB) in its home city of Berlin to once again detail its planned network growth for summer 2012, some of which has already been featured in The HUB over the past two months. This year the carrier is to expand its offering from Berlin, Dusseldorf and Vienna with new destinations and increased frequencies on some existing routes. It will also see the carrier launch operations at Berlin’s new airport Berlin Brandenburg serving 70 destinations with around 750 weekly departures

“We have thoroughly reviewed our schedule in recent months. New destinations have been added, efficient routes have been expanded. What was inefficient, has been eliminated,” said Hartmut Mehdorn, Chief Executive Officer, airberlin. “We are a network carrier offering global connections to our passengers, thus our schedule will reflect a greater emphasis on our hubs.”

The new routes include additional growth in the transatlantic market. From May 11, 2012 a three times weekly link between Berlin and Los Angeles will be introduced, just a day after a twice weekly Dusseldorf – Las Vegas operation is inaugurated. At Berlin, in addition to the new daily flight to Budapest which was launched in February following the collapse of Malev Hungarian Airlines, a twice daily weekday offering to Gdansk will be added from May 1, 2012; a weekly service to the Namibian capital Windhoek will commence later the same month, while Berlin - Abu Dhabi flights, launched on January 15, 2012 will be increased from four times weekly to daily this summer.

Elsewhere, airberlin will launch a new daily flight between Dusseldorf and Abu Dhabi from March 25, 2012 to complement its offering from the capital city, a daily service to Phuket will also be provided from Dusseldorf, while its winter service to Mombasa will continue for the summer schedule. A new weekly flight will also be introduced from Friedrichshafen to Ibiza. Meanwhile, in Austria, subsidiary NIKI will introduce flights from Vienna to Mahon, the capital of the Balearic island of Menorca, continue its recently launched three times weekly connection to Tel Aviv and add a twice weekly Salzburg – Olbia link.

Alongside the new routes, frequency increases will be introduced on 27 existing routes. Among its long-haul offering, airberlin will add three more flights from Berlin to New York with daily flights to the Big Apple starting in May. San Francisco and Miami flights from Dusseldorf will also be increased by one rotation, resulting in three and five flights per week, respectively.

In the European market routes from Berlin to Scandinavia will three daily flights every weekday from May as part of the hub development in the capital city and additional flights will be introduced to the Italian cites of Catania and Naples. In May airberlin will also upgrade its Dusseldorf - Venice route to twice daily and boost links to Naples. Elsewhere, airberlin will expand its programme from Zurich to Olbia and Brindisi as well as to Palma de Mallorca, which will remain a major network point with 38 flights per week from Dusseldorf and 21 a week from Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart.

The airberlin group will also expand its offerings from Austria with NIKI increasing flight frequencies from its Vienna base to Belgrade and Copenhagen with two flights per day to the Serbian city and three to the Danish capital. NIKI has already implemented frequency increases to three a day to the Eastern European cities of Sofia and Bucharest and more flights are now planned to Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca; the latter being served nine times weekly during summer 2012.

With Etihad Airways as its largest single investor and with formal entry to the oneworld alliance due to take place later this month, airberlin is likely to take on a much more important role in the German market. It currently is the second largest airline operating from German (domestically and internationally) behind national carrier Lufthansa, a member of the rival Star Alliance. The table below shows airberlin’s share of the available seat capacity over the past five years including its current plans for the year ahead, and its main rivals.