Next June, Berlin finally consolidates its commercial air traffic at the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport (built on the old Schoenfeld Airport). Historically, Berlin hasn’t been able to support much service to the US, but Air Berlin is betting that this will change. Its three weekly nonstop flights between JFK and Berlin will go daily while the airline will also start nonstop flights to LA three times a week.

Will this new airport really make a difference? Will Berlin finally become a major operation or will these just fizzle away?

German supermarket Lidl will be running a promotion with Air Berlin at all their UK stores. For the week beginning September 5, customers will be able to buy £19 vouchers that can be turned in for a one way ticket on Air Berlin.

It’s a pretty interesting promotion, I think. According to The Guardian, there is a code on each voucher, and you can just enter it on the website or over the phone and it acts as the form of payment for the flight. It of course depends upon availability of the low fares on that flight, but I think everyone expects that.

They’ve tried this type of promotion with complete success before, so I wonder if it’s a matter of time before it becomes permanent.

It’s a great competitive advantage. The legacy carriers have fare structures that are too complicated for handing out free one way tickets. That’s why you see gift cards becoming popular over here. You can go to any Vons/Safeway/Dominick’s and many other places and buy a gift card for a variety of airlines.

But it’s not much fun to give someone a credit toward a flight. It’s a lot cooler if you can give someone two vouchers and say, “Here’s your trip to Spain.” Only low cost carriers with simple pricing structures can pull off something like that.

Air Berlin, which has quietly become one of Europe’s largest low cost carriers, announced today they’ve acquired primarily domestic German airline dba.

dba is one of those wayward airlines that has drifted from owner to owner over the years. Originally, it was Deutsche BA, owned by British Airways, but it performed so poorly that they sold the airline for 1 single lonely euro. Since that time, dba has focused primarily on the domestic German business market with a tight agreement with LTU to feed their long haul flights.

Now that Air Berlin is taking over dba, we can expect some changes but not too many.

• The airline will continue to operate as dba, but it will now be marketed lamely as “Air Berlin powered by dba.”
• Schedules will be fully integrated by summer 2007
• It sounds like Air Berlin is going for more of a business traveler focus, so some of dba’s practices may be brought over. They were proud to say they had obtained 62 new corporate contracts, so they’ll have to make sure they keep those people happy.
• They get slots in airports like Munich and Dusseldorf, places they wouldn’t have been able to expand on their own. Expect to see some of those flight schedules shift around if they find better opportunities.

Sounds like a good move for Air Berlin to me.