Airberlinis in a dire financial situation at the moment, and is undergoing a lot of changes. On the most basic level, airberlin is leasing about three dozen of their planes to Lufthansa, in hopes of minimizing losses as much as possible. Lufthansa will use these planes to grow their low cost Eurowings division.
Continue reading: Surprising: Airberlin Adding Berlin To Hong Kong Flights As Of October 2017
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Lucky - they used to fly to Phuket just a few years back (and Bangkok too if I am not mistaken). I remember seeing their A330 there once. Believe the flight went via Abu Dhabi.
I flew Bangkok Air for SIN-USM roundtrip over the holidays, but on-board what I'm assuming was a plane leased from Air Berlin. Definitely was an interesting surprise!
Glad to see this.
Europe is actually an undeserved destination from HKG.
too many airports with single daily services and not competitive at all.
i came up of few legitimate European second tire cities that are decent and either fly to other asian destinations or just seem suitable by size.
Brussels, Kazan,Prague, bermingham ,marseille, belgrade, Bremen, Copenhagen, Dublin, Bremen, Barcelona,Athens,Ankara,Kiev,Berlin,Minsk,Bukaresht,Budapesht,Oslo, 0
then i listed a bunch of major airports underserved off my head
milano 4 weekly (CX)
paris 2.5 daily (2 airlines).
istanbul 6 weeky (TK)
Madrid: 4 weekly (CX)
Finally some sufficient coverage from HK to:
zrh, lhr,vie ,moscow
bottom line: More direct flights HK to Europe is sustainable and necessary.
And on a different topic - i just saw last week that Air Berlin opened up a lounge in terminal C, airside. it's still small with limited seating, but with variety of food selection, drinks, spirits etc...
The good thing about this is that this could be a cheap way to get to Asia with British Airways points and low taxes, especially since booking the return flight from Hong Kong is guaranteed to be low taxes due to their laws
Needs to be two one ways though
Perhaps an indication that Airberlin will stay in Oneworld? There is no way they can have a good load without CX feeding the route on the HKG end.
@Stan: Here's a report about the new lounge on a German website including some pictures: https://reisetopia.de/2017/01/19/neue-lounge-am-flughafen-berlin-tegel/
On the topic: The flight is quite an interesting development. Berlin only has very few direct flights to Asia (just Beijing and Ulaanbaatar; plus Doha and Abu Dhabi in the ME). There's definitely a market, but airberlin definitely needs the CX feeders.
This is pretty insane, especially for a carrier in Air Berlin's financial state. Berlin is a fantastic city but it is NOT a financial capital nor will it be anytime soon. It has an emerging creative and media market, an industry which Hong Kong basically lacks. Tegel is too small to be a proper connecting hub and god knows when Brandenburg airport will open.
It is also very well served by the ME3 and by Lufthansa via daily Frankfurt and Munich services and CX/BA via London, as well as Swiss via Zurich just to name a few. Thanks to the ME3 connections there is no point in CX trying to fill seats on this route via connections into Hong Kong. Can see a tourist market here but no idea how they intend to fill the front of the plane.
Looks like a smart move that should have done long ago.
From TXL, passengers fr HK could transit to many parts of europe using AB's network. It is also an option for HK folks to reach East Coast of North America via AB.