Etihad to raise its stake in airberlin to 49% – will it leave oneworld?

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• mrtibbs1999 says:

  24 Mar24 March 06:31

  Sad news if they leave, The Tibbs family love the Oneworld Sapphire you can get through them. In fact a least one of us has been gold solid for 14 months now!

  • Alba says:

    24 Mar24 March 06:44

    How do you achieve this, out of interest?

• tony says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:26

  Not sure I agree with the assessment that ” it is effectively a budget short-haul airline with some long-haul routes attached.”

  I’ve flown with them short haul a few times. The food offering is comparable with BA and although you don’t get free booze, it’s not a big deal on a 1hr hop. Also they allow connections (unlike most LCCs) and bags travel free. A couple of years back, my kids got these great activity packs onboard for a short hop – on a par with what BA supply for long haul.

  And it doesn’t really “feel” like a LCC either.

  Not that any of that will matter as to whether they leave OW, but just wanted to offer my thoughts!

• Scott says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:39

  I did a TXL-JFK flight with them back in December and it wasn’t too bad. More private seat than BA; food not too bad; nice “pop open” Tumi bag for the amenity kit; good crew; boarding process needs a little bit of improvement; having to operate the screen by touch isn’t great.

  Great deal at 40k Avios + £64 so I hope they don’t go over to Bling Air.

• Phillip says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:40

  By the sounds of it, Etihad wants to develop Air Berlin’s connectivity. For that, I would have thought, tapping onto some OW feed would be beneficial in turning the airline around without Etihad itself having to join any of the alliances. That said, I don’t know what percentage of Air Berlin passengers join from OW connections – if not that many, then maybe they don’t have much more to gain.

  • Rob says:

    24 Mar24 March 09:37

    Well, Etihad gets all the Avios redeemers for a start! What is also part of this is that Germany has been naughty in trying block the Middle East airlines getting access to slots and airports – this is a bit of a workaround.

    • Phillip says:

      24 Mar24 March 10:21

      Which no doubt makes Lufthansa enormously unhappy! They’ve fought this long and hard enough! They must so regret passing on an opportunity for a tie up with QR all those moons ago!

• vonnie says:

  24 Mar24 March 10:42

  Could the opposite not happen and Etihad join OneWorld?

  • Rob says:

    24 Mar24 March 12:10

    Unlikely. Etihad believes that alliances have very limited practical benefits, buying up stakes in Alitalia, Aer Lingus, Virgin Australia, Air Baltic, airberlin, Air Seychelles etc is their preferred alternative.

• PaulW says:

  25 Mar25 March 21:21

  Raffles, I just booked a seat on airberlin TXL – AHU service on an A330.

  I’ve just checked on the airberlin website to secure a seat and it is showing 8 across seating in business (the same as economy) are you sure it will be a business class product?

  Otherwise I’d rather cancel and rebook economy. Thanks for your advice!

  • PaulW says:

    25 Mar25 March 23:00

    Thanks, you are a star! Looks like a great product, am very much looking forward to my £37 one way in business. Not quite sure how they can squeeze 8 business seats in a row though, seat guru came up with a completely different plan from the airberlin website.

    I might consider an avios redemption from DXB – HEL for my return stopping over to catch up with some friends. Another great value route, but in economy I imagine.

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