AB is moving from MXP to LIN / AZ codeshare + miles earning
 

moving from MXP to LIN
 

That means no connection from/to AA JFK and MIA.

This is a great news for me! I live close to LIN and this move will make traveling on AB even easier. BA lounge at LIN is very good too.

This is really cruddy for me. In December I have an AB flight from TXL to MXP, connecting to Cathay Pacific to HKG. Now the flight from TXL will arrive at LIN and I'll have to travel across the city to get to MXP for the flight to HKG.

Anyone know how this affects luggage? I had wanted my two very heavy luggages to be checked through directly to HKG. :-/ Does this mean I'll have to lug the luggages across the city also?

Are both flights on one ticket/booking? If so, maybe you can ask to be rebooked on TXL-FRA-HKG on AB/CX or even TXL-LHR-HKG on BA/CX? I think getting from LIN to MXP is quite an inconvenience and not acceptable if the flights were booked together.

Yes, the flights are booked on one ticket. Problem is that my wife and I are booked for two F class seats on CX from MXP to HKG, and two F award seats are incredibly difficult to come by, so I'm pretty much stuck. Maybe more F seats will open up closer to departure.

I still haven't gotten official notification that the flights have changed! But searching for flights on Matrix no longer shows the old flights to MXP and only shows the new flights to LIN.

Does AB allow a refund (for a non-refundable fare) if I do not want to fly to LIN?

Yes it will mean you have to lug your bags across town.

Which carrier issued the ticket? If that carrier has an interline with Eurowings, perhaps they can put you on that instead.

They should.

My award ticket was issued by US Airways. Do you have any idea if they interline with Eurowings?

Thanks in advance!

Code share and miles with Alitalia
 

Apologize for the Italian language:

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Buongiorno!
A pochi minuti dal centro: dal 26 ottobre 2014 airberlin volerà da Milano Linate, l’aeroporto vicino alla città.

Inoltre, grazie al nuovo partner di code sharing Alitalia, dal 26 ottobre potrai usufruire di collegamenti migliori e oltre 400 voli non-stop tra Italia, Germania, Austria e Svizzera. Potrai così programmare il viaggio in base alle tue precise esigenze.

Prenota ora i biglietti da Milano Linate:
Voli a partire da 99 €*

P.S. Inoltre, dal 1° novembre, potrai accumulare preziose miglia topbonus su tutte le tratte operate da Alitalia.

Il team di airberlin
ti augura buon volo
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1) Alitalia, new code share partner

2) from Nov 1st, you can earn miles on all Alitalia fligths

Thanks for all those news - I've edited the thread title so that it better reflects all the content that can be found within.

ralfkrippner
forum moderator

I found out about this today.

I have a booking VIE-MXP for 30th December returning 2nd January with Niki. Last week airberlin/Niki sent me an e-mail advising me of a change of times, but the airport is shown as the same. However, when I checked my booking on their website, it clearly shows that they've changed the destination airport to LIN.

Now, this might be better but I've already booked a room at a hotel for 1 night near the airport at MXP! Unfortunately, this is a non-refundable booking so I won't get my money back for cancelling it. So I'm not very happy. Will airberlin pick up the bill for the night in a hotel??

I would definitely try to get that hotel money back. But you will have to invest some time in contacting AB and probably follow up (a few times?).

thanks ralfkrippner, I'll certainly give it a try. I don't see why I should be out of pocket because they changed the destination airport. I'll report back the result.

So just to follow up on this for future reference,

Airberlin/Niki will not reimburse my hotel booking, even though they changed my airport of departure. They say that they can't give me my money back for booking the hotel.

I'm not impressed, and will remember this in the future when thinking of booking with Airberlin. This is not very professional of them.

They have agreed to rebook me on a later flight, which gives me time to travel from MXP to LIN by bus/train. Unfortunately, I have been booked on an Alitalia flight, which means that I won't have access to the oneworld lounge.

This is my first bad experience with Airberlin/Niki, but it seems like they think they can change flights without compensating customers for inconvenience. Not a good result.