Long-Haul Destinations from Berlin, Summer 2015

Like many a good German airport company, the management of Berlin Tegel issues a printed timetable for traveler's reference. As we conclude the present series of posts on operations at Tegel in the Summer of 2015, this map offers an appropriate conclusion. 

There are two many cities here to feature in one or even two posts, and it is not particularly noteworthy that the German capital is connected to some three dozen other cities across Europe. This week we have, however, discussed a bit about the somewhat peculiar circumstances of Berlin's commercial air transportation, still divided between multiple airports, awaiting the long-delayed opening of its 21st century hub.

In the meantime, tiny Tegel, something of the LaGuardia of central Europe, squeezes in only a handful of long-hual flights, in part due to the city's dispersion of air traffic and in part due to the 

centralization of airline operations around Lufthansa's Frankfurt megahub and Munich base. 

Hometown carrier Air Berlin does the city some good turns, particularly the high-prestige widebody services to New York JFK and Chicago O'Hare. United offers the only US Flag appearance, with its 767 flights to Newark (although these are sometimes ignominiously downgraded to narrow body 757s in the winter). Delta Air Lines just announced this month that it will soon return to Tegel, which is symbolically important as Tegel was such an important base for Pan-Am's intra-Europe operations that Delta inherited. Air Berlin also flies to Reykjavík-Keflavík and a number of warm-weather leisure destinations. 

Perhaps more interesting are the handful of airlines connecting eastward to Asia. Azerbaijan Airlines was just recently featured here, and Qatar Airways scored a coup when it beat out Emirates for service to the Gulf—although Etihad snuck in through its ownership stake in Air Berlin, which flies non-stop to Abu Dhabi. Iraqi Airways makes for more fun planespotting, flying to both Erbil and Baghdad. This post is the first time we've featured the Iraqi flag carrier. 

Hainan Airlines added Berlin to its European system in 2012 along with Brussels and Budapest, and connects to Beijing with a A330-200 (rather than one of its Dreamliners). But what is surely the most unusual airline landing in Reinickendorf is MIAT Mongolian Airlines, which has actually long-served Berlin, landing its A310s at Schönefeld since at least the late 1990s. The Mongolian flag carrier currently operates one its gorgeously painted B767-300s via Moscow Sheremetyevo airport, and this post marks its premier on the Timetablist.  Although the airline also flies twice-weekly non-stop to Frankfurt, and once served Prague, Berlin is one its only European gateways. 

Air Berlin: Berlin to Chicago and New York, July 2015

A last item in the series of box-light billboard adverts at Berlin Tegel last summer: one of the undoubted pride of the German capital's operations, the hometown Air Berlin's widebody non-stops to Chicago and New York JFK. As mentioned earlier this week, Berlin has somewhat curious commercial aviation arrangements. These reflect in turn, the situation in the largely decentralized Germany as a whole, for that matter, where the dominant flag-carrier Lufthansa somewhat underserves large metro areas like Hamburg and the Rhein-Ruhr by concentrating a classic hub-and-spoke system in all-powerful Frankfurt and the highly-important but rather out-of-the-way Munich. This leaves the country's largest urban center and unquestionably one of the most important capitals of Europe with only a handful of long-haul options. 

El Al: Boston to Tel Aviv Non-stop, June 2015

In just the last four years, starting in about 2012, Boston's Logan International Airport has seen one of the most astonishing periods of international traffic growth in the history of American aviation. In a startlingly compacts period of time, beginning with JAL's dreamliner service to Narita in April 2012, Logan's somewhat pedestrian terminal E has seen an astonishing addition of new tail fins—especially those running long- and ultra-long haul intercontinental flights from New England: Hainan, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, COPA, Aeromexico, Turkish, and WOW Air. These are now being joined by Norwegian, Qatar Airways, Eurowings, Air Berlin, SAS, Thomson Airways and TAP Air Portugal, in addition to new services by Jetblue, Logan's de facto hub airline. 

Last year, in mid-2015, El Al was a somewhat unlikely participant in this onrush. The Israeli flag carrier launched a thrice-weekly B767-300 non-stop to the Holy Land gateway, Ben Gurion International Airport. This print ad, boasting a beachy scene of Tel Aviv's skyscraper-studded riviera, featured in Boston magazine ahead of the first flight. Likely paid for by Massport as part of the incitement package offered to El Al to secure and support the service. Whatever the state agency has been doing, it's been doing it right. 

Air Berlin: The Long-haul Destinations from Munich, summer 2013

A somewhat clever transit-map styling of an Air Berlin wall advert at the Munich Airport U-bahn station, showing the diverse long-haul destinations, which by and large are leisure markets. Four continents are covered: from Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, and Male in the Maldives, to Mombasa in Kenya and Windhoek in Namibia (the latter two, sadly, seem to have since been dropped from the network). In the Americas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles are complimented by Caribbean resort towns such as Cancún. On the red horizontal line, further sun-and-beach destinations are separated from the more urban trio of Barcelona, Moscow, and Vienna. Strangely, the device isn't carried all the way through, as there is no interchange station in the center where the two lines intersect.

Arrivals at Dresden International, August 2013

The television arrivals screen at Dresden airport in Germany on a Friday in August of 2013, showing many internal flights on Lufthansa from Munich and Frankfurt, and on Air Berlin from Düsseldorf.  Easyjet has a single service on the board from Basel. Air Berlin also flies in from Antalya, Turkey, and Germanwings arrives from Cologne with an earlier service in from Corfu, which is not the sole Greek Isle connection shown on the board, as there is a later charter arrival on Pegasus from Kos.

Various International Destinations from Frankfurt, Summer 2011

Excerpts from the Summer 2011 Timetable published by Frankfurt International Airport, showing Lufthansa's multiweekly nonstops to sub-Saharan Africa, such as Abuja, Accra, Addis Ababa, Lagos, Libreville, and Luanda; as well as Ethiopian's 5-times weekly to Addis and Air Namibia's all-but-Wednesday nonstop to Windhoek; Condor Flugdienst's once-weekly scheduled charters to Arusha, Tanzania's Kilimanjaro International and Agadir in Morocco; Sun Express and Turkish Airlines leisure flights to Adana; Lufthansa and Croatia Airlines flights to Zagreb, and Air Berlin's Friday flight to Zakynthos in Greece.

Intercontinental Destinations from Munich, Summer 2011

Munich's gorgeous and efficient airport may not be a first-tier European gateway, nonetheless its status as a Lufthansa "fortress hub," second only to Frankfurt, and the presence of a number of international airlines, provides Bavaria connections with five continents, with an increasing list of global carriers from the Middle East, Russia, and East Asia adding to the scope of Munich's reach. The Eastern portion of this map will be detailed in the next post.

Wealthy Bavaria is also linked directly with several leisure destinations, including the Maldives and Mombasa, and the Namibian capital, Windhoek, which to this day retains one of the largest German-speaking communities in Africa.