Air Berlin might join American Airlines' approved
transatlantic airline joint venture, AA said Tuesday, following Monday's
announcement that the German carrier would become a member of the wider Oneworld
alliance.
Air Berlin signed a memorandum of understanding that should
lead to it gaining full membership of Oneworld in 2012, although it will start
codesharing with American and Finnair, which has a strong Asian network, from
the beginning of the winter 2010 timetable. However, at a press conference in
Berlin Tuesday, American Airlines president Tom Horton raised the distinct
possibility that Air Berlin also could join the even more closely knit
transatlantic joint venture between American, British Airways, Iberia, Finnair
and Royal Jordanian. The JV obtained antitrust immunity only last week from the
U.S. Department of Transportation and the week before from the European
Commission.
"This has been a pretty big week for Oneworld,"
said Horton. "Now that we have antitrust immunity, we will have the
ability to discuss the future of Air Berlin with the other joint venture
partners, so stay tuned."
Bundling Air Berlin into the joint venture would make strategic
sense for what may superficially appear an unconventional addition to the
Oneworld alliance, given that Air Berlin started as a chartered leisure carrier
in 1979 and does not operate a business class on short-haul flights. However,
what it does give the joint venture and Oneworld alike is an opportunity to
offer some vigorous competition to Lufthansa, the driving force behind both
Star Alliance and its rival transatlantic joint venture, dubbed Atlantic
Plus-Plus, to which United Airlines, Continental Airlines and Air Canada all
belong.
Air Berlin is Europe's fifth-largest carrier and has
increasingly competed head-on with Lufthansa for the German corporate market
since acquiring DeutscheBA in 2006. It has a 40 percent share of the domestic
German market and, as of March 31, it had 1,276 corporate contracts, having
added 314 clients in 2009 and another 121 in the first quarter of this year.
Air Berlin is also the market leader between German and Italy, with a 30
percent marketshare, and operates a dense schedule to other key European
business markets, including London. In addition, it flies to New York JFK, Los
Angeles and Miami.
Although Air Berlin flies as well to numerous holiday
destinations and operates on a lower cost structure than legacy carriers, it
offers a short-haul service that is little different from the restructured
economy classes of its traditional rivals. Service frills for business
passengers include premium checkin, a mileage program, newspapers and free
drinks. It also has full global distribution system access and increases the
number of destinations in the Oneworld network by 75 to a total of 900. "Air
Berlin is a very high-quality airline," said Horton. "It is more of a
hybrid carrier along the lines of JetBlue."
One of Air Berlin's biggest weaknesses is that it has little
marketshare in Frankfurt and Munich, the two hubs of Lufthansa. However, it has
proved highly attractive to corporate customers anxious to resist Lufthansa's
powerful grip in its home market, and it has substantial marketshare in
Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Berlin, albeit without operating a true hub-and-spoke
network. However, this could change in early 2012, when not only will Air
Berlin join Oneworld fully, but Berlin will open a new airport, Berlin
Brandenburg International, giving the German capital a single, unified airport
for the first time since World War II.