irishguy28

???

You can either look at topbonus as a "travel agent" that deals almost exclusively with Air Berlin; even when it issues tickets for travel on a different airline, it is issued on Air Berlin stock.

If this means that there is "no connection", are you therefore similarly saying that you similarly don't see a connection between AB going out of business and , say, Expedia tickets issued on AB stock?

You could also look at topbonus as a "loyalty scheme" whose sole customer is Air Berlin. [topbonus DOES NOT function as a loyalty programme for any other airline]. If that sole customer goes out of business...do you really not think there are severe implications for topbonus?



There is an outside chance that, in the event of failure of AB (or AZ), that Etihad Loyalty would roll those accounts into Etihad Guest. But that's a very big if. Etihad is already on the hook for billions; you could look at it in the sense that "another few hundred thousand Euro in liabilities won't matter - especially if they can be converted into good Etihad flyers"; alternately, Etihad may decide that taking on any further debt other than what it is legally required to accept (and these other airlines' FFPs are in no way required to be continued in the face of collapse of their airlines) is not what it wants to do. Certainly, with Alitalia, it appears that EY has decided not to invest/waste another cent on them; I don't think expecting FFPs to remain intact and untouched beyond the collapse of their airline is a very realistic outlook.

Even if it did make some gesture like this, I would certainly not count on any issued topbonus redemption tickets being honoured (except, perhaps, those issued for Etihad metal).