Air Berlin : Around 70 percent more bookings in a single weekend

To celebrate the positive decision with regard to airberlin's codeshare routes, Germany's second largest airline offered 10 million tickets with a 24 percent discount last weekend. airberlin passengers welcomed the decision by displaying their confidence in the airline: During the ticket campaign, airberlin recorded up to 70 percent more bookings than the previous year. During the ticket campaign, Business Class - with its comfortable full-flat seats - accounted for five percent of long-haul bookings. Another highly-demanded optional extra was XL seats: airberlin is fitting 48 XL seats with extra legroom to all its A330-200 Airbus planes. On average, every 14th booking also included a Sylt Sansibar gourmet meal, such as the popular Currywurst, for example.

Stefan Pichler, Chief Executive Officer airberlin, said: 'This campaign has shown that our passengers were waiting for a clear signal regarding the codeshare discussion. Bookings have increased and we'd like to thank our passengers for their confidence. At the same time, competition in the German aviation industry has gained new impetus.'

The trends:
Flights to the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca from all departure airports in Germany, Austria and Switzerland were in particularly high demand. airberlin has increased its capacities to Palma de Mallorca this year by three percent. The expanded service to Italy has also been very well received by airberlin's passengers. In terms of long-haul routes, Berlin-Chicago did particularly well. Compared to the previous week, a lot more flights were booked from Dusseldorf to the new airberlin destination of San Francisco. No airline flies from Düsseldorf more frequently to North America. Combined with the destinations from Berlin, this summer airberlin is offering eight destinations in the US. As well as San Francisco, two new destinations that are coming into service are Boston and Dallas. Cuba is also one of the trending destinations for 2016. Round trips are becoming increasingly popular: many travellers are combining an outward flight to the newly added destination of Havana with a return flight from Varadero.