Auf Wiedersehen AirBerlin!

On 27 October AirBerlin will cease operation, the last flight (AB6210) will be flying from Munich to Berlin, departing at 21:35. The last flight of Airberlin has been sold out for 2 weeks, with some seats going for six times the typical fare.

AirBerlin was set up in 1978, flying with a single plane (a leased Boeing 707) and one route: from Berlin to Palma de Mallorca. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the carrier expanded from Berlin, though it focused on shuttling German vacationers to and from Spain.

In 2006, AirBerlin bought DBA, the German arm of British Airways, and in 2010 it purchased Niki, and AirBerlin became Germany’s second largest airline.

Since 2006, AirBerlin has posted a net annual profit only three times, with losses widening over the last four years.

On 15 August 2017, AirBerlin entered insolvency procedures after the withdrawal of ongoing support from its largest shareholder, Etihad Airways.

On 12 October 2017, Lufthansa agreed to buy 81 aircraft and employ 3000 AirBerlin workers together for €210 million, taking over the subsidiaries Niki and Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter with a total of 1700 employees.

Other AirBerlin planes and crew could end up continuing to fly as the carrier has been working frantically in recent days to hammer out last-minute deals with EasyJet and Thomas Cook’s German affiliate, Condor.

Source: Bloomberg