AIR BERLIN'S ENTRY into the Oneworld alliance will confirm its status as a serious business airline, its UK and Ireland general manager Titus Johnson believes. The German carrier enters the alliance a few months before the 2012 Olympics and weeks before Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) airport opens in June that year. BBI is currently under construction on the site of the existing Berlin Schonefeld airport and has ambitions to rival Frankfurt, at which Lufthansa and the Star Alliance carriers dominate, as a hub when it is completed.
"Air Berlin will be the biggest carrier at BBI when it opens," said Johnson. "We have a share of the domestic market of more than 40 per cent. As a home carrier we bring Oneworld a very big player in Germany with a high number of connecting opportunities at BBI."
Air Berlin, a hybrid carrier that evolved by offering on-board frills but with budget fares, is now Germany's second largest and Europe's fifth biggest airline, carrying 28 million passengers.
Air Berlin already serves more German cities than any other airline and it will easily outstrip Lufthansa's presence at BBI, which will be able to handle up to 45 million passengers per year, although the new airport, at its peak, will fall far short of an expanded Frankfurt airport, which plans to accommodate 88 million passengers by 2020.