AirBerlin's last long haul flight landing at Düsseldorf - missed approach

Patrick wrote:

Except, Monday was completely cloud free in the entire country I think.

That reminds me of a radio call I heard some time ago (from an Air Berlin flight as a matter of coincidence…):
AB: “Air Berlin XYZ, request heading ABC”
ATC: “Is that for weather or as a shortcut?”
AB: “Shortcut”
ATC: “Sorry, wrong answer. Continue as cleared”

It’s enough when the pilot sees the cloud (or the runway in case of landing)

Patrick wrote:

From a customer point of view, …

I have heard from others as well that they liked flying with Air Berlin. Myself I have only done a couple of domestic flights which I hardly remember, other than there were no free seats next to me…. A memorable one was Bremen to Stuttgart with a stop in Munich which took half of a day. The bus ride from the termial in Munich to the remote position where their Dash 8 was parked took actually longer than the flight to Stuttgart. It would even have been quicker not to stop at the plane but for the bus to drive the remainder of the way to Stuttgart… But this was not ABs fault of course.

I flew quite a lot with them in 2015 and 2016, because the fares were lower and especially in Munich and Duesseldorf the respective terminals were easier to access which saved time. They were usually very friendly and nice.

For Germany it’s a shame, the whole thing a stitch up to the detriment of the passengers. Monopoles are always bad, and fares have already gone up and will continue to do so.

I always hated them. When we used them a couple of times for flights to our home on Crete when our kids were still very small they would always lose the seat reservations. Their IT systems were awful, at least the couple of times we used them. And a couple of times the 3 and 5 yo kids were seated 20 rows away. and that happened at least three times. I also didn’t like how they constantly tried to sell you something.

I won’t miss them.

what_next wrote:

He did not follow the standard missed approach procedure but turned early, so the maneuver must have been approved by ATC (“low approach followed by visual pattern”).

To me it is pretty obvious this “stunt” was planned. Why else would there be someone in the tower to film the whole thing? They were all waiting for them.

Monopoles are always bad, and fares have already gone up and will continue to do so.

Air Berlin has never earned any real money to break even. The last decade Etihad sponsored them. Those here who operate their own aircraft should at least know that a flight ticket must cost more than the taxi ride to the airport. They should not wonder seeing their beloved Air Berlin going bankrupt. I prefer to pay a little more to be sure my airline is sane, their staff well paid and not on the brink of bankruptcy. But my fellow countrymen like it cheap … see the success of those discounters like Aldi, Lidl & Co …

nobbi wrote:

…should at least know that a flight ticket must cost more than the taxi ride to the airport…

The strange thing is that Air Berlin was never really cheap. Germanwings and now Eurowings (both Lufthansa) were always cheaper than AB. Why they still failed to make a profit will always remain a mystery of our trade… One thing that didn’t do them any good was their rapid growth in the late 1990ies and throughout the 2000nds. They bought out other airlines in the process, some of them close to bankruptancy (which is not a good thing to do as companies like Swissair can tell) and others for which they paid way too much (which is as bad). But still, with all those billions pumped in by Etihad they should have been able to survive. I wonder what swallowing that toad will do to Lufthansa – if I were them I would have stayed well clear.

what_next wrote:

Why they still failed to make a profit will always remain a mystery of our trade

In my view, some of the factors were:

• Bad contracts, especially the long-term deal with TUIfly to drylease their aircraft at a rate way over market
• Lufthansa defending their home turf at all costs; e.g. when Air Berlin started flying Hamburg-Frankfurt 5 times a day, Lufthansa made sure they were always 5 Euros cheaper, until Air Berlin gave up. Same on other routes and long haul
• Negative image with passengers as a “charter carrier”, even when they had long outgrown that phase, meant that whenever there was a choice the majority would prefer to book Lufthansa, even though the Air Berlin product was actually better in some ways (new business class on long haul for example)
• Failure to focus on one business model meant they were too small to be a hub carrier but too big to focus on profitable point-to-point routes
• Probably the single most important factor: Less aggressive yield management – for many years they sold one-way tickets at half the price of a return ticket (as it should be from a passenger point of view), not playing many of the dirty tricks that especially LH had perfected to extract ridiculous prices out of certain passenger groups which they could determine to be dependent on booking certain flights. Also resulting in selling a lot of capacity too early too cheap, and doing special sales in waves of aimless actionism just to fill their planes and all cost
• Bad IT and unapproachable sales team (speaking from own professional experience)
• BER airport disaster deprived them of one major pillar of their strategy to become the main hub carrier for Berlin (maybe this wasn’t even only pure coincidence?)

Just found this following some links:

http://www.aero.de/news-27712/LBA-untersucht—Air-Berlin-Flugmanoever-in-Duesseldorf.html

The German aviation authority is investigating the cause for the go-around at Düsseldorf. According to the text, the visual go-around with the early left turn was performed in accordance with ATC. In my text book, one needs no reason to go around. Don’t feel comfortable with the approach – go around! No further questions asked. The day this rule changes I will quit flying.

@Rwy20 yours and most other items can be summarized by one very simple reason: bad management.

I think it is important that badly managed companies go bankrupt and disappear. This is how the market should work. The stupid money from the Gulf only delayed it for far too long.

Lufthansa should not have gotten a single piece of the Air Berlin remainders and I really hope that the EU will sue Germany for that move and undo it. The solution to Lufthansa’s problems is not to give it back its monopoly.