Niki

An Airbus with an Austrian registration but in Air Berlin’s red and white – if you have a photo like that from the 2010s in your archive, you have very likely caught Niki. Niki Lauda’s Vienna airline flew from 2003 to 2017 and was, for much of that time, the Austrian arm of the Air Berlin world. This page shows you how Niki came about, which aircraft it flew, why it stayed on the ground in December 2017 and how to reliably recognize its aircraft in old pictures.

Niki at a glance

Niki was an Austrian airline based at Vienna Airport. Officially it was called NIKI Luftfahrt GmbH, and in its branding it was mostly simply “niki” or “flyniki,” after the internet address. It was founded by Niki Lauda, the former Formula 1 world champion, who had already built up Lauda Air in the late 1970s. That made Niki his second airline.

In terms of business model, Niki counted among the low-cost airlines, but on board it behaved more like a classic leisure airline: drinks and a small snack were included for a long time, and if you wanted, you could even pre-order menus from the Viennese confectioner Demel. Flights went mainly to vacation destinations in Spain, including the Canary and Balearic Islands, and to Egypt, plus city connections within Europe.

On December 14, 2017, it was over: after the insolvency of its partner Air Berlin and the failed sale to the Lufthansa Group, Niki ceased flight operations.

Codes and callsigns

• IATA code HG: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards – for example on the last flight, HG2601.
• ICAO code NLY: used by air traffic control in the flight plan, and that is how Niki also shows up in old ADS-B recordings.
• Callsign FLYNIKI: the crews used it to check in on the radio.

In the later years especially, it pays to look at the codes. Because Niki aircraft flew in Air Berlin design and there were many codeshares, the paint scheme alone did not reveal who operated a flight. If the flight plan said NLY, it was Niki – even if an AB flight number was printed on the ticket. How to evaluate such data after the fact is explained in the guide to matching sightings with ADS-B logs.

The history in stages

Niki’s roots lie in another bankruptcy. In spring 2003, Aero Lloyd Austria was founded as an offshoot of the German Aero Lloyd. When the parent went insolvent in fall 2003, the Austrian subsidiary was left without aircraft, because all the aircraft were leased from the German company. Niki Lauda took the majority in November 2003 and built his new airline on it.

The years from 2011 are especially interesting for spotters. Legally, Niki remained its own Austrian airline with its own codes, but it increasingly presented itself as part of the Air Berlin system. Aircraft were swapped between the companies, booking ran through shared systems, and frequent flyers collected miles in Air Berlin’s Topbonus program.

Niki’s fleet

Throughout its existence, Niki was above all an Airbus airline. The basis was the A320 family, built by Airbus, with the A319, the A320 and the A321. The aircraft were generally leased.

Type	Period at Niki	Role	Spotter note
Airbus A320	2003–2017	Backbone of the fleet	Medium fuselage length of the family
Airbus A321	until 2017	Full leisure flights, with over 200 seats at the end	Longest fuselage, two pairs of emergency exits over the wing
Airbus A319	from 2015 from the Air Berlin fleet	Replacement for the Embraer	Shortest fuselage of the three
Embraer 190	until 2015	Smallest type in the fleet	Briefly handed to LGW in 2013, then to Helvetic
Boeing 737-700 and 737-800	2017	Extra capacity	Flown by TUIfly on wet lease, with winglets

The Embraer 190s are the rarest chapter of the Niki fleet. In 2013 they briefly moved to Air Berlin sister company Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter but returned for the 2013/14 winter schedule. Between December 2014 and June 2015, they finally went to Helvetic Airways. A photo of a Niki Embraer is therefore a true archive piece. How to tell the E-Jets apart is shown in the guide to the Embraer E-Jets.

The Boeing 737s at the end were also unusual. When Niki took over Air Berlin’s leisure routes in 2017, TUIfly flew part of the flights with its own 737-700s and 737-800s on wet lease. The fuselage then did not necessarily say Niki, but the flight plan showed an HG flight number. What stands behind this model is explained in the article Wet lease explained. In December 2017, the fleet thus comprised around 30 aircraft; sources give slightly different numbers depending on the reference date and counting method.

The surest way to tell the A319, A320 and A321 apart is the fuselage length and the emergency exits over the wing. The details are shown in the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart.

How to recognize Niki

Niki’s appearance changed several times over fourteen years. To classify old photos, it helps to know the phases:

Period	Paint scheme	How to recognize it
2003	White with title	Completely white aircraft, “flyniki” in blue and red at the front of the fuselage
from early 2004	White with stripes	New logo and two red stripes on the white fuselage
from fall 2005	Silver	Silver paint with a stylized bow tie on the forward fuselage
from fall 2012	Air Berlin design	Red-and-white paint like Air Berlin, Niki logo near the nose

The last phase is the trickiest. At first glance, a Niki aircraft after 2012 looks like any other Air Berlin Airbus. Two details make the difference: the Niki logo at the front of the fuselage and the Austrian registration with OE- instead of D- at the tail. Registrations in the OE-L.. series were common, for example OE-LOG, the aircraft of the last flight. How the Austrian system is built is explained in the article on OE registrations.

Hybrid forms existed too, because aircraft changed between the companies. An Airbus could have started with Air Berlin under a D- registration and later continued flying with Niki under an OE- registration – or the other way around. Such transitional states are described in the guide to hybrid and mixed liveries.

Bases and routes

Niki’s center was Vienna-Schwechat. Most flights departed from there, plus departures from Salzburg, Graz and Innsbruck. Linz was also part of the network for a time; Niki dropped those flights in January 2017. In March 2017, several German airports were added when Niki took over leisure routes from Air Berlin.

The destinations were clearly vacation-oriented: Spain with the Balearic and Canary Islands, plus Egypt and other Mediterranean vacation destinations. An important anchor point was Palma de Mallorca, where Air Berlin was also strongly represented. In addition, Niki offered city connections from Vienna, for example to Zurich and Milan, and for a time even a medium-haul route to Abu Dhabi – the only one of its kind in the network. Many of these city flights ended in the course of the restructuring in early 2017.

Through codeshares, Niki was also connected to other airlines. From Vienna, it was for years one of the best-known alternatives to Austrian Airlines.

The end: insolvency in December 2017

Niki’s problems were above all Air Berlin’s problems. In December 2016, Air Berlin announced it would sell its stake in Niki to Etihad Airways for 300 million euros. Etihad and TUI negotiated over a new leisure airline in Europe, but the talks failed in June 2017. That left Niki caught between two stools when Air Berlin filed for insolvency on August 15, 2017.

The bidding process then took an unusual course. At the end of December 2017, the International Airlines Group initially won the bid. For 36.5 million euros, it wanted to take over aircraft and takeoff and landing slots in Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich, Palma and Zurich and turn them into an Austrian subsidiary of Vueling. Then, on January 8, 2018, the Berlin Regional Court ruled that the Austrian courts were responsible for Niki. On January 12, the main proceedings were reopened at the Korneuburg Regional Court – and there Laudamotion, Niki Lauda’s airline, prevailed. The Niki brand name, however, was not part of the package.

How Niki compares with other collapses is put in context by the article on major airline bankruptcies in Europe. The story of the parent company is told in the magazine article on Air Berlin.

Niki in everyday spotting today

You no longer see an aircraft in Niki branding in scheduled service. Niki is now an archive topic – but a rewarding one. If you took photos in Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck or at a Mediterranean airport between 2003 and 2017, you will very likely find Niki aircraft on your memory card. The pictures from the Air Berlin phase in particular are worth a closer look afterward, because without the registration they quickly end up in the wrong folder.

Tracing where the aircraft ended up is exciting, too. Because the fleet was leased, the aircraft were spread among new operators after 2017, and some kept flying with Laudamotion. The serial number lets you trace an aircraft’s life story, as shown in the guide How old is this aircraft?.

You can still visit the places of Niki’s story. At the observation deck at Vienna Airport and the Vienna visitors’ hill (Spotterhügel), you see the traffic of the airlines that stepped into the gap in Vienna today. Tips for visiting are collected in the guide Plane spotting in Vienna-Schwechat; what the law says in Austria is covered in the article on the legal situation for spotting in Austria.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Niki with Air Berlin – Niki was its own Austrian airline with the codes HG and NLY, even though it flew in Air Berlin design from 2012.
• Confusing Niki with Lauda Air – Lauda Air was Niki Lauda’s first airline, from 1979, and was absorbed into Austrian Airlines.
• Thinking Niki and Laudamotion are the same company – Laudamotion bought parts of Niki in 2018 but was its own company.
• Attributing every OE aircraft in Air Berlin design to Niki – that is usually right, but always note the registration in your archive.
• Listing the TUIfly 737s of 2017 as Niki aircraft – they flew on wet lease, and TUIfly remained the operator.
• Calling Niki a full oneworld member – Niki was linked only through Air Berlin.

Conclusion

Niki was more than an offshoot of Air Berlin. The airline emerged in 2003 from the collapse of Aero Lloyd Austria, shaped leisure traffic from Austria for fourteen years and disappeared in December 2017 in the wake of Air Berlin’s insolvency. For spotters, it remains a chapter full of details: three paint phases before the Air Berlin look, rare Embraer 190s and a legacy that lives on at Lauda Europe to this day in the form of Airbus A320s.