Air Berlin has formally announced its date of ascent into the OneWorld alliance, and it’s the 20th March 2012 according to the PR at http://www.airberlin.com/site/pressnews_dr.php?ID=3613&LANG=eng.

After the 20th March, they will be a full members and NIKI will be joining OneWorld as an affiliate member.

Already codesharing with some members of the alliance, joining OneWorld will increase the network coverage to 840 destinations in 150 countries. Air Berlin will over connections in Germany, Southern and Central Europe, adding 70 destinations to the OneWorld map.

Getting onto miles, earning will start on the 20th March with OneWorld member miles dumpable in AirBerlin’s Top Bonus Accounts. Similarly, Air Berlin/NIKI segments will then be available for dumping into other OneWorld member accounts for your tier points and tier bonuses. Redemptions will also open up too on NIKI and Air Berlin.

Earning rates have of course not been disclosed at this time.

Air Berlin have their problems (and it seems OneWorld is attracting airlines that seem to be falling down – Mexicana who fell, Malev who seem to be trying to stave off bankruptcy proceedings  and KingFisher who are not in the greatest of states), but hopefully this should give Air Berlin a welcome boost.

Etihad Airways is to increase its stake in Air Berlin to 29.21%, which will make it the largest single shareholder in the German carrier. For Air Berlin, this could seem an angelic feat as they are in the middle of a restructuring programme.

They are increasing their stake by 2.99%, at a cost of €2.31 ($3) per share. Eithad will also invest up to to $255 million in Air Berlin over five years to support its fleet development and future network growth. It will also gain 2 seats on the Air Berlin board too.

In Air Berlin’s part, they will move their Middle Eastern operation from Dubai to to Abu Dhabi, operating four flights a week from 15th January 2012 with Airbus A330-200. Both carriers will extend their codeshares and integrate their frequent flying programmes.

To aid their future developments, both Etihad and Air Berlin will seek antitrust immunity.

Etihad is a serial investor, owning shares of 34 airlines, with Etihad seeing this as a way to increase its European footprint.

Combined, Air Berlin and Etihad carry 40 million passengers a year, operating 233 aircraft, and employ 18,000 people.

Etihad Airways is currently not aligned to any alliance, whilst Air Berlin is still integrating for OneWorld membership.

When a carrier announces it’s having a “shape and size” rethink, you know there’s a major reorganisation afoot. And alas, it’s Air Berlin who is doing this.

In an effort to turn around the airline and return it to profitability, routes are be cancelled left right and centre including

Munster – London
Onasbruck – London
Hanover – London
Paderborn – London
Paderborn – Manchester
Frankfurt – Hamburg
Frankfurt – Naples
Stuttgart – St Petersburg
Munich – Cairo
Düsseldorf – Paris.

In addition, Air Berlin is removing 1 million seats in capacity – in the form of 8 planes to be withdrawn.

With these cuts comes a price, and it came with the CEO Joachim Hunold, tendering his resignation blaming the German Aviation tax (akin to APD), fuel rises (the current bogeyman), and issues in the North Africa region where flights have been cut.

Shape and Size will also hit the regional airport in Germany, so expect more cuts there too.

Well, Air Berlin has been expanding like a bad spiderweb. Unfortunately, it seems that they got tangled a bit too much in it….

We’ll be doing a mini catchup over the next couple of days.  Lots been happening – me mostly sleeping through it. I’m also in the middle of planning my next trip at the mo – a post on that later.

An Air Berlin Boeing 737-800 Flight AB2450 departing Dortmund (Germany) to the to Las Palmas, Canary Islands (Spain) overran the runway during takeoff, and ended up at the end of it in the snow, nose down.

The pilot aborted takeoff due to a technical irregularity, and failed to stop the plane before runway threshold.

Thankfully, none of the 165 passengers or 6 crew were hurt, and the they were evacuated using air-stairs.

With weather conditions in Europe expected to get worse, focus on De-icing and runway maintenance – as well as delays and re-routings will become the norm…

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