AirBerlin does not live up to One World Standard
 

recently flew from LCA via VIE to MUC. My luggage has been mishandled.
The Munich AB rep was not interested in any gold card status.
Its now 3 days. I have hot heard anything except a message on their lost bag portal that nothing has been found. phones are not picked up. emails not answered. In Larnaca there was no lounge asses granted despite there is a lounge used by all one world partner. will avoid AB as much as I can

Air Berlin has its own section.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/airberlin-topbonus-696/


This is incorrect. In Larnaca, the Sunjet Apollo lounge is available to customers travelling on BA, and the Swissport Executive Lounge is available to customers travelling on QR and RJ.

There is no lounge access for oneworld status customers travelling on either Air Berlin or S7 Airlines when departing LCA. See: http://www.oneworld.com/ffp/lounge-access

http://i62.tinypic.com/ix81s9.jpg

The LCA lounges are operated by third parties, access is only provided for those travelling on BA, QR or RJ as per the oneworld site:
http://www.oneworld.com/ffp/lounge-access

There are plenty of threads on BA baggage delays and poor communication.

Personally, I have found AB/HG very good for intra-Europe flights. Although a bit of a hassle sometimes, you can get free XL seat selection and often seat blocking.

+1 to both of you.

OP - There's both an AB and an OW forum.

I like the term "lounge asses"! :D

also: does the statement that "The Munich AB rep was not interested in any gold card status." mean that the OP assumes that airlines actively hinder/delay/slow down the search for luggage for regular pax, only expediting lost baggage issues when it becomes apparent that the passenger had status?

I would prefer to think that lost bags are all traced with equal vigour and alacrity. It is not something that should be expedited for status holders...

If you consider the extensive luggage problems of BA in June, I would say that your experience lives up to BA standards.;)

AB is one of my main airlines, and it does work well on paper, in terms of opening up all sorts of locations that BA don't serve, along with some fairly obscure sectors via DUS or TXL. My recent trips on them in the last 6 months or so include Reykjavik, Kraków, Kalingrad, Skopje and Linz. Indeed my route into the Jersey do is DUS to JER. Some of these are BA codeshares.

But it is indeed a bit of a culture shock, it's not a comfortable experience at all, particularly the seats, and I'd place them below Easyjet in terms of quality of seat / service. I can well recall collapsing into a clapped out BA converter seat, and thinking how wonderful it was compared to a new-ish airberlin A320 that I had just left in DUS. But they can be cheap as well as doing all sorts of interesting routes. You get what you pay for. They are essentially a lowish cost carrier and being Emerald counts for very little. Some of the above have lounge access (e.g. KRK), many did not (e.g. KEF). Excluding the laughable Exklusiver Wartebereich, AB run just one lounge of their own, in terminal C in DUS - with another in Berlin if they ever get round to opening that airport.

US isn't far off AB's standards, by the way!

This thread has been moved from the BA forum to the Air Berlin forum as it appears to be more relevant here.

LTN Phobia
Moderator: BA forum

I didn't find AB to be overly amazing nor terrible when I travelled with them in August 2013

Hang on, this is all wrong.

The Sunjet Apollo Lounge referred to above was in the old terminal, which closed 5 years ago! It was that dismal smoky room full of smelly leather armchairs.

The new terminal (open since 2009) has two lounges:
- Swissport Executive Lounge (3rd party lounge, used by BA, RJ etc)
- Aegean Business Lounge (used by A3 and Star Alliance)

There is no OneWorld Lounge at LCA. Apart from the A3 Lounge, there is only the Swissport Lounge, which individual airlines contract with. I don't recall seeing AB on the list of airlines.

You can however get into the Swissport Lounge with Priority Pass.

lost bag since 5 days and no contact
 

their standards are below most other members. they have lost my bag now for 5 days and I did not receive any message. except the stereotype worldtracker message telling me that it is on delivery. they do not pick up phones and do not respond on mails. I have even looked up some of their senior ground handling staff on linkedin. but it seems to be part of their culture ignoring passengers.
I have now delegated the matter to an solicitor who is experienced with them.

All in all I think I think they shall leave one-world. their customer service standards are below what we know from other member carriers. watching their communication it feels that they are much closer to etihad rather than their one-world partner. this causes a conflict on many eastern routes and confuses passengers.
I have decided for me not using them any more. I rather make a deviation or take the train or LH.

Maybe won't survive much longer. Their results are awfull and only ethidad saves them. But can't take more than 49%

Housekeeping notice: I've moved this post into the existing thread started by the same member.

ralfkrippner,
forum moderator

I'm a voice outside the chorus on this matter: I actually like AB. I flew with them quite a lot since they joined oneworld and never had major issues, they're not a full service airline, but for short hop flights they're fine for me. I'd rather book an AB flight which includes a connection in either TXL, DUS or VIE (which might be ugly, but extremely easy to connect in) rather than sticking on EasyJet or Ryanair. Their network is uncommon, as CWS said, and they're usually very cheap. I hope and think they'll stay in oneworld, I will doubtless use them for my intra European flights.

I also appreciate AB - not that I'd love them, but it's a solid product, at least comparable to their main competitors (LH group). Yes, their seating is very tight (so is LH's NEK, IB, etc and so will be BA's new seats just rolled out) and their food service is minimal (same as LH, LX, BA in Y; but still much better than some of other flag European carriers such JP which has even stopped to serve water ...). Baggage handling in Europe is almost always outsourced and done very cheaply. Bottom line, it is lightyears from Asian flagcarriers and - unlike the North American carriers - it does not offer more spacious seating in part of the cabin.

But apart from the interesting network, AB has a very good ontime performance and makes sure prices remain reasonable even on mainline routes. E.g. ZRH-DUS return is usually around 150 - 200 EUR return, while the same distance ZRH-BRU, which is an LX monopoly, is always more than 1000 EUR (taxes about the same).

I've also had very good experiences on airberlin and I try to use them instead of Lufthansa these days. I find the product, with the option of pre-ordering more substantial catering, quite good and consistent.

If you're talking about an airline which does not come up to oneworld standards, the it had to be Iberia Express, which I find myself on too often these days. Iberia mainline, too, to a certain extent, although I find them just about ok mist of the time.