airberlin is a oneworld airline, partner of American and British Airways, that’s largely controlled by UAE-based Etihad.
They have a great business class product for long haul travel, and they do not add fuel surcharges to their fares. That means when redeeming miles, even British Airways miles for travel across the Atlantic, there are no fuel surcharges.
And when you can’t get American’s own flights across the Pond, they’re a great option for AAdvantage redemptions as well.
airberlin is increasing its US flights by 40% going from 55 to 78 weekly flights.
They’re planning (3) new routes: Award availability is really good, but while economy award space is showing at AA.com you’ll need to call for business space not showing online. You’ll see good business class award space for 2 passengers from Germany to the US but not US to Germany.
- Orlando – Dusseldorf four times weekly starting May 6.
Orlando – Dusseldorf, 4:15pm – 7:00am+1 (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat)
Dusseldorf – Orlando, 9:45am – 1:45pm (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat)
- San Francisco – Berlin four times weekly starting May 1.
San Francisco – Berlin, 1:35pm – 9:35am+1 (Mon, Wed, Thu, Sun)
Berlin – San Francisco, 9:20am – 11:50am (Mon, Wed, Thu, Sun)
- Los Angeles – Berlin three times weekly starting May 1.
Los Angeles – Berlin, 7:55pm – 4:00pm+1 (Tue, Thu, Sat)
Berlin – Los Angeles, 3:20pm – 6:10pm (Tue, Thu, Sat)
They’re also increasing frequencies on their Boston and San Francisco – Dusseldorf flights and their New York JFK and Miami – Berlin flights.
Another positive is that airberlin is introducing a business class product for intra-Europe flights. It’s traditional European business with middle seats blocked and upgraded catering, but it’s an improvement for passengers connecting to other European destinations.
Now last November airberlin announced Dallas, San Francisco, and Boston – Dusseldorf flights to join its Chicago, Fort Myers, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles service. But they didn’t actually start Dallas service. So an announcement, it seems, isn’t a guarantee.
But more quality oneworld transatlantic flights with no fuel surcharges is a good thing.
Might be missing something, but called and they can’t see the seats on most of those routes. Where are you having AwardNexus pull this space from?
Cool. They announced these flights a long time ago, but since they hadn’t started yet I assumed they had changed their minds. But just slow to execute I guess.
I used AAdvantage miles to fly airberlin several times. Pretty much a thing of the past now though. Since Doug Parker took AA avaiaibility lower than SkyPesos, airberlin rarely comes up available. Everything comes up British with outrageous surcharges.
You can only uncheck BA on the website for each day, you can’t exclude it from the calendar results., making finding non-BA reward flights like finding a needle in a haystack. I wish there were a way to search AA excluding BA.
I agree with tassojunior. Have really never seen AB pop up searching AA or even BA’s sites, always shunting you onto BA metal with the enormous surcharge – even if oil went to one dollar a barrel – they’ll never ever give up that revenue stream. Even Iberia doesn’t show up. You might get Finnair once in a while. Hmmm? Not that United is much better the past years. Have noticed UAL shunts you onto oddball carriers like Air India, Ethiopian, Air China. Lufthansa though seems to be United’s most frequent availability US-Europe; almost no UA metal flights at the lower cost. Still, I’d rather fly LH.
@tassojunior when you search at aa.com just specify AA only, or search specific non-stop routes for other airlines and select non-stop only.
@Lucky That’s weird. AA.com only found the economy space, but I rang up American and asked about a couple of dates and the agent said she saw the space.
Strange, when I wrote my post neither British Airways nor American were showing any of this availability. I’m on a super slow 1990’s style internet connection right now but I’ll be jumping on these if they’re available when I get back to the 21st century!
@Gary- I do try AA only and also try just searching from hubs. Airberlin almost never shows up TATL and Iberia never shows up.Is Iberia even on AA’s search?
Gary, did you actually read tassojunior’s post? Do you actually understand how AA’s search engine works? Have you actually tried? Does not appear so.
He/she said: “You can only uncheck BA on the website for each day, you can’t exclude it from the calendar results., making finding non-BA reward flights like finding a needle in a haystack.”
You then replied. “@tassojunior when you search at aa.com just specify AA only, or search specific non-stop routes for other airlines and select non-stop only.”
No – it doesn’t work that way! If you are looking for AB space, checking “AA only” defeats your purpose – AB results would be filtered out (if they actually existed). If you don’t check “AA only” you get endless BA every day (with their endless price gouging), and no AB.
The only way to search for AB availability is to search one…day…at…a…time, which is not only slow and useless, it only allows you to check next/previous days (a slow process too) for a few “days” at a time – after about 7 days of “next day/previous day” searching, it won’t allow that any more and you have to start over. It takes longer to search a month-long range of dates for AB availability than it does to actually FLY to Germany.
I have spent countless hours in the past two weeks going through this impossible process, the website response is super slow (I have a very fast connection). It simply does….not….work. And that is not some convoluted routing with stops – that is searching for a single leg nonstop flight between AB’s hubs in Germany and destinations in the US – I find exactly zero availability after spending (literally) an entire night going through this exercise.
Either you don’t understand how their search works, or you have never actually tried it yourself, or you are being dishonest. tassojunior has it spot-on above.
@Fred – please re-read what I wrote. You search AB award availability via calendar by searching AB routes and selecting non-stop only for those routes. Don’t search from your home city to your potential destination.
Expert Flyer is showing Business award availability but EXP Agent can only see Economy. Did HUCA and same result. Ideas?