Air Berlin

If you stood at a German airport in the 2000s, you could hardly avoid Air Berlin: red tails, the lowercase “airberlin” titles and aircraft from turboprops to long-haul Airbuses. Today the airline is history – but history that stays exciting for spotters. This page sums up how a small US charter company in West Berlin became Germany’s second-largest airline, which aircraft it flew and how to identify it with confidence in old photos and logbooks.

Air Berlin at a glance

Air Berlin was a German airline that flew from 1979 to 2017. Its name stands for one of the most astonishing growth stories in German aviation – and for one of Europe’s biggest airline failures. For many years Air Berlin was Germany’s second-largest airline after Lufthansa. In the record year 2011 it carried around 35.3 million passengers.

The airline’s profile changed completely several times along the way. Air Berlin started as a pure leisure airline with charter flights to Mallorca. Later came city connections within Germany and Europe, after the takeover of LTU also long-haul flights, and from 2012 Air Berlin was a member of the oneworld alliance. The most important hubs were Berlin-Tegel and Düsseldorf.

On August 15, 2017, Air Berlin filed for insolvency. The last scheduled flight under its own name landed at Tegel late on the evening of October 27, 2017. If you want to read the whole story in narrative form, you will find it in the magazine article on Air Berlin.

The history in stages

Air Berlin’s founding can’t be understood without West Berlin’s special situation. Until reunification only airlines from the USA, the United Kingdom and France were allowed to fly to the city through the air corridors. A German airline had no chance there. The American pilot Kim Lundgren, who had previously flown for Pan Am, therefore founded Air Berlin Inc. in 1978 with a license from the US aviation authority FAA.

The early years were shaped by holiday flights from Tegel. For Berliners, Air Berlin was therefore for a long time the airline you flew on vacation with. The transformation into a major airline only came after 2000: Air Berlin grew with city connections aimed at business travelers and weekend vacationers alike, and bought up several competitors within a few years.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code AB: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards, for example on the last flight AB6210.
• ICAO code BER: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign AIR BERLIN: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

The ICAO code in particular causes confusion today. BER is now best known as the IATA code of Berlin Brandenburg Airport. But IATA airport codes and ICAO airline codes are separate systems. If you come across “BER” in old flight data or logbooks in the column for the operator, Air Berlin is meant – if it is in the column for the location, the airport.

Growth through acquisitions

Hardly any German airline grew as much through acquisitions as Air Berlin. Every takeover brought new routes, new aircraft types and new bases – and made the fleet more colorful than the uniform red design would suggest.

Company	Period	What it brought
Niki (Austria)	Stake from 2004, later 49.9 percent	Partner in Vienna with its own flight operations
dba	Takeover 2006, flight operations ended 2008	Domestic German city connections
LTU	Takeover from 2007, fully integrated 2011	Long-haul with the Airbus A330 and a base in Düsseldorf
Belair (Switzerland)	Stake from 2007, full control 2009	Leisure flights from Switzerland
City network of TUIfly	Takeover 2009	Numerous city connections in Germany
LGW	Majority from 2009, full purchase announced in May 2017	Dash 8-400 operations on regional services

The takeover of LTU was the biggest step. It brought long-haul aircraft of the type Airbus A330-200 and a strong position in Düsseldorf, which became the second hub alongside Tegel. The Austrian Niki, on the other hand, remained an independent airline, closely tied to Air Berlin. Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter flew the turboprops in Air Berlin livery.

oneworld and Etihad

In 2010 Air Berlin announced it would join the oneworld alliance. Membership was completed in March 2012. That made Air Berlin a partner of airlines like American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia and Finnair, with which it also offered codeshare flights. For long-haul from Berlin and Düsseldorf to the USA this was an important support. Some aircraft additionally carried the oneworld logo on the fuselage – which alliance liveries exist on aircraft is shown in the article on alliance liveries.

Almost at the same time Air Berlin got a new major shareholder. In December 2011 Etihad Airways raised its stake from 2.99 to 29.21 percent and thus became the largest single shareholder. Etihad then bailed out the airline with money several times, including in 2012 by buying a majority stake in the Topbonus frequent flyer program. Air Berlin thus became part of a network of airline stakes with which Etihad wanted to gain a foothold in Europe.

Air Berlin’s fleet

Over the years Air Berlin flew a wide range of types. In the early years it was the Boeing 707 and early 737s, later the 737 Classic and Next Generation generations shaped the picture. From 2005 the Airbus A320 family joined, which in the end made up the largest part of the fleet. The manufacturers of the jets were Airbus and Boeing.

In August 2017, shortly before the end, the fleet comprised 132 aircraft:

Type	Number (August 2017)	Use	Spotter note
Airbus A319	11	Short and medium haul	Shortest variant of the family
Airbus A320	65	Short and medium haul	By far the most common type
Airbus A321	6	Short and medium haul	Longest fuselage of the family
Airbus A330-200	17	Long-haul	Partly taken over from LTU
Boeing 737-700	5	Short and medium haul	Shorter sister of the 737-800
Boeing 737-800	8	Short and medium haul	For a long time the backbone of the fleet
Dash 8-400	20	Regional service	Operated by LGW

Types used earlier included, besides the Boeing 707, the Boeing 737-400 and other 737 variants, as well as Fokker 100s that Air Berlin had leased from Germania. Via Belair, Boeing 757s and 767s were added as well. Incidentally, since July 2016 Air Berlin owned no aircraft of its own anymore – the entire fleet was leased.

The many types make old Air Berlin photos a good exercise in type recognition. Between the A319, A320 and A321 you tell most reliably by fuselage length and the arrangement of the emergency exits, as the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart shows. For the Boeing aircraft, the overview of the generations of the Boeing 737 helps.

How to recognize Air Berlin

Air Berlin’s appearance changed several times. The first Boeing 707s and 737-200s still wore the US company’s design. With the Boeing 737-300 came a ruby-red livery in 1986 that stayed largely the same for a good twenty years. From June 2007 Air Berlin switched to a design modeled on the last LTU livery: the dark burgundy disappeared, and the tail, engines and underside of the fuselage became bright red. In January 2008 a new logo and the slogan “Your Airline” followed, while the basic livery stayed the same.

The identifying mark of the late years is easy to remember: white logo on a bright red tail, plus the brand name in one word and in lowercase – “airberlin”. A new design planned for 2016 with a bear on the tail was no longer implemented because of the insolvency.

A special case are the Dash 8-400s. They wore the Air Berlin design but were operated by LGW. There were mixed forms the other way around too: from February 2017 Air Berlin Airbuses flew with crew on wet lease for Eurowings and Austrian Airlines. An Air Berlin aircraft therefore didn’t always operate an AB flight.

Hubs and routes

Air Berlin’s heart beat in Berlin-Tegel. It all began here in 1979, and the last own scheduled flight landed here in 2017. How the airport itself was laid out and why it still fascinates spotters is covered in the entry on Berlin Tegel Airport and in the history of Tegel.

The second big hub was Düsseldorf, strengthened by the LTU takeover. From there and from Berlin Air Berlin also flew long-haul, for example from 2011 from Berlin to New York and from 2013 to Chicago. At times Air Berlin also operated hubs in Nuremberg and in Palma de Mallorca; the airline gave up Nuremberg for the 2013/14 winter schedule and Palma in summer 2016.

The route network reached from Europe via North Africa and Israel to North America and the Caribbean. Typical of Air Berlin was the mix of vacation destinations and city connections – a legacy of its origin as a leisure airline.

The end: insolvency in 2017

Despite its size Air Berlin posted losses for years. In 2011 the loss was around 272 million euros, in 2016 around 782 million euros. Several leadership changes and restructuring plans brought no turnaround. In 2016 Air Berlin announced it would concentrate on a core fleet of 75 aircraft and long-haul and lease a large part of the remaining aircraft to the Lufthansa Group.

Parts of the company went to other airlines. The Lufthansa Group agreed in October 2017 to buy LGW and a number of aircraft; the deal with Niki that was initially planned as well was withdrawn by Lufthansa after concerns from the EU Commission. easyJet took over part of the Tegel operation with A320s. How Air Berlin compares with other collapses is put in context in the article on major airline failures in Europe.

Air Berlin in today’s spotting routine

For your logbook, Air Berlin is mainly an archive topic. If you photographed at Tegel, Düsseldorf or a vacation airport between the 1990s and 2017, you very likely have Air Berlin aircraft on your memory card. It is worth sorting these pictures afterward: type, registration, location and date turn a souvenir photo into a clean logbook entry.

The search for what became of them is exciting too. Because Air Berlin had leased its fleet, the aircraft were spread among new operators after 2017. At Eurowings, easyJet and other airlines, former Air Berlin aircraft kept flying under a new registration or new design. If you want to check an aircraft’s origin, the guide How old is this aircraft? helps, because the life story via the serial number also reveals earlier operators.

If you want to visit the places of Air Berlin’s history today, you will find good vantage points at the observation deck at Düsseldorf Airport and the observation deck at Berlin Airport – with the traffic of the airlines that jumped into the gap after Air Berlin.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing the ICAO code BER with BER airport – one code belongs to the airline, the other has belonged to the capital airport since 2020.
• Taking every red Air Berlin design for an Air Berlin flight – from 2017 many aircraft flew on wet lease for Eurowings and Austrian Airlines.
• Equating Niki and Air Berlin – Niki was its own Austrian airline, closely tied but with its own flight operations.
• Logging the Dash 8-400 as an Air Berlin operation – LGW flew them, only the design was Air Berlin.
• Taking Air Berlin for a pure low-cost airline – with oneworld, business class and long-haul it was a network airline in the end.
• Dating the founding to 1991 – the German company was created in 1991, but Air Berlin itself had flown since 1979.

Conclusion

Air Berlin is an airline with two faces: for many it was the Mallorca flier from Tegel, for others the red oneworld airline with long-haul from Düsseldorf. In between lie almost four decades, numerous takeovers and a fleet of Boeings, Airbuses and turboprops. For spotters a look back is worthwhile – at old photos, clean registrations and the aircraft that kept flying under other names after 2017.