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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 2395.PDF
THE AIRLINE FROM BERLIN EuroBerlin's political objectives are readily apparent, but the Air France/Lufthansa joint venture is also a means for both carriers to try out new commercial structures in the evolving European market. Mark Blacklock reports from West Berlin. EuroBerlin, as a newcomer to West Berlin's Tegel Airport, lacks dedicated gates, and 40 per cent of the carrier's flights use remote stands E uroBerlin France," says director general Jean Signoret, "is a model of co-operation". The carrier's initial capital of FFr30 million has been 51 per cent subscribed by Air France and 49 per cent by Lufthansa, with the founders jointly providing senior managerial staff. Signoret himself was formerly Air France's general manager for West Germany. Operations follow UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rules, because EuroBerlin's four Boeing 737-300s are leased from Monarch Airlines, which provides the flight-' deck crews and maintenance backup. The cabin crews and administrative staff are mainly locally recruited Berliners, with Lufthansa performing ground handling in West Germany, and BLAS (a joint-venture between Lufthansa and the Berlin Airport company) in West Berlin. "What we wanted and what we have achieved," continues Signoret, "is a flexible commercial organisation, as small as possible, with most services subcontracted at the best rates." To understand the factors behind the formation of EuroBerlin, it is necessary to go back to the early 1960s, when Air France was a prominent carrier in the West Berlin market, which has been restricted to Ameri can, British, and French airlines since the end of the Second World War. At the end of 1961, all of Air France's oper ations were switched from Lockheed Constel lations to Sud Aviation Caravelles, which needed longer runways and therefore had to use Tegel Airport rather than close-in Tempelhof. The latter was to remain West Berlin's main commercial airport until 1975. "So long as there were no jets operating out of Tempelhof we were quite successful with the Caravelle," says Signoret, "but as soon as the jets came to Tempelhof, in 1966, our load factors sank and we started reducing capacity." There was a short-lived joint operation with BEA, using One-Eleven-500s, but by 1973 Air France had restricted its Berlin pres ence to the Tegel-Dusseldorf-Paris route, leaving British Airways and Pan American as the dominant scheduled carriers. This was the situation until 1987, when' renewed growth in the Berlin market started to attract the attention of US majors Ameri can, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and TWA. Four of the five carriers eventually filed route applications, and the French faced even further dilution of their small market share. West German flag carrier Lufthansa, which had been exiled from the Berlin routes since 1945, was also concerned about the growing US presence in central Europe, The two carri ers were already collaborating in the ATLAS maintenance and Amadeus computer reser vations consortia, and decided to see whether it would be possible to ward off the challenge. "We had two constraints," explains Signoret. "There was no spare aircraft or pilot capacity in the Air France fleet, and we needed a flexible solution." The idea was to set up a small carrier which could readily adapt to changes in the local market, and which was not burdened with Air France's and Lufthansa's mainline cost struc tures. In fact, there is a certain parallel with UTA's subsidiary Aeromaritime, but Signoret is quick to stress that Aeromaritime is currently a charter operator, while EuroBerlin is primarily active in the scheduled market. "We were not set up just to be a low-cost carrier. It was more a search for a flexible and efficient answer to a difficult situation. We found it with Monarch." The British carrier gained experience of the Berlin operating environment when it flew inclusive-tour charters out of the city for a number of seasons in the early 1980s. There is also an interesting connection with another British airline, because Monarch, while •. leasing-out four 737-300s to EuroBerlin, has lea'sed-in Berlin European UK's 737-300 to maintain its commitments out of Luton. Having made its route applications as a "new French carrier" earlier in 1988 to the Allied Air Attaches (who regulate West Berlin's civil aviation), EuroBerlin France was officially constituted in Paris on September 9, FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 5 August 1989 29
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