Air Berlin files for bankruptcy

[defurax]

Looks like a virus has been affecting AB pilots...
Insolvent Air Berlin warns on future as 200 pilots call in sick

 

[Princess Fiona]

So the inevitable has happened and my Award booking has been cancelled.
Departure is just over two weeks away. No email or other notification from QF yet but showing as cancelled on MMB.
I'll ring up tomorrow and see what if anything they can do. The website info isn't particularly inspiring

 

[samh004]

So the inevitable has happened and my Award booking has been cancelled.
Departure is just over two weeks away. No email or other notification from QF yet but showing as cancelled on MMB.
I'll ring up tomorrow and see what if anything they can do. The website info isn't particularly inspiring

So long as you get the points back.

Having recently flown them in Europe, I can't say I would want to fly them again. So perhaps you dodged a bullet there, unless you've previously enjoyed their service?

 

[Princess Fiona]

So long as you get the points back.

Having recently flown them in Europe, I can't say I would want to fly them again. So perhaps you dodged a bullet there, unless you've previously enjoyed their service?

The problem is that I booked the Award months ago to attend a wedding. Now two weeks out I find myself scrambling to organize alternative flights and will be significantly out of pocket due to having to cancel/ rearrange other flights/ hotels etc booked around this Award trip.

The P1 SST have suggested I call AB

 

[samh004]

The P1 SST have suggested I call AB

Ever helpful.

Hopefully now it has been cancelled they will re-book you on another carrier, instead of a refund.

 

[Himeno]

I've only flown on Air Berlin once. FRA-TXL long before they joined oneworld. Felt like a DJ flight.

 

[Danger]

The problem is that I booked the Award months ago to attend a wedding. Now two weeks out I find myself scrambling to organize alternative flights and will be significantly out of pocket due to having to cancel/ rearrange other flights/ hotels etc booked around this Award trip.

Oneworld should really be treating its passengers better in these sorts of circumstances. Insolvency of its members is nothing new. By now they should have a process in place. Two weeks out is pathetic.

The P1 SST have suggested I call AB

That is a shocking response that I wouldn't expect from the 13 13 13 line, let alone SST.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Oneworld should really be treating its passengers better in these sorts of circumstances. Insolvency of its members is nothing new. By now they should have a process in place. Two weeks out is pathetic.



That is a shocking response that I wouldn't expect from the 13 13 13 line, let alone SST.

UPDATE:
Patched through to Res by the SST a couple of days ago. QF have contacted the OW Liason to try to find out if AB are re-booking (doubtful). They have held seats (Y only available) on AA/BA for me and waiting to hear back from them.
In the meantime I enacted a back up plan.
Booked LH F FRA-ORD with Krisflyer

 

[samh004]

Booked LH F FRA-ORD with Krisflyer

That's how you should always have done it

 

[Mattg]

That's how you should always have done it

LH F availability is usually only released to partners 2 weeks out. So, perhaps the ongoing AB debacle (and the time taken to resolve it) is a blessing in disguise.

 

[Princess Fiona]

An update :
For background info I had an AB return from TXL-ORD in J booked using QFF points. 8 days ago the flights were cancelled. I first called QF last Monday and posted above about it.

An email from QF arrived in my inbox Friday saying that they had found alternative flights on BA via LHR and to call Res to confirm. The email was from Mindpearl so I was somewhat skeptical. At some point over the weekend the BA flights in Club World appeared in QF MMB and the AB ones disappeared. Booking visible on BA.com and notifications in from MyFlights of the change. Went onto BA website and chose seats. Happy Days
I logged into QF today to email the itinerary (at this point QF MMB was showing BA flights via LHR). Every time I tried to import the emailed itinerary into TripitPro the cancelled AB flights came back. Very curious.
Called the SST and patched through to RES to find out there is no such booking attached to the ticket number. RES cannot explain why I was emailed these flights and they appeared as if booked.
Good job I never turned up to the Airport expecting to fly
I have been offered AY via HEL but need to come back a day earlier otherwise it's J out and Y return and also give them 40K points and €300 extra for the rebooked flights.
I really expected a bit more from QF, I'm now lowering my expectations accordingly.

 

[anat0l]

LH F availability is usually only released to partners 2 weeks out. So, perhaps the ongoing AB debacle (and the time taken to resolve it) is a blessing in disguise.

Still lucky to find it though - LH F is quite rare, even if SQ KF having a bit more muscle in the game.

An update :
For background info I had an AB return from TXL-ORD in J booked using QFF points. 8 days ago the flights were cancelled. I first called QF last Monday and posted above about it.

An email from QF arrived in my inbox Friday saying that they had found alternative flights on BA via LHR and to call Res to confirm. The email was from Mindpearl so I was somewhat skeptical. At some point over the weekend the BA flights in Club World appeared in QF MMB and the AB ones disappeared. Booking visible on BA.com and notifications in from MyFlights of the change. Went onto BA website and chose seats. Happy Days
I logged into QF today to email the itinerary (at this point QF MMB was showing BA flights via LHR). Every time I tried to import the emailed itinerary into TripitPro the cancelled AB flights came back. Very curious.
Called the SST and patched through to RES to find out there is no such booking attached to the ticket number. RES cannot explain why I was emailed these flights and they appeared as if booked.
Good job I never turned up to the Airport expecting to fly
I have been offered AY via HEL but need to come back a day earlier otherwise it's J out and Y return and also give them 40K points and €300 extra for the rebooked flights.
I really expected a bit more from QF, I'm now lowering my expectations accordingly.

Sheesh, what a mess from QF.

I'm surprised QF can't find out why the etix was not attached to the booking correctly. More surprising is why they couldn't just force the issue if need be, i.e. reconfirm the flights they had organised, reissue the etix and be on the way. If the seats had disappeared, I find that hard to believe, because it seems there was a reservation, just not a ticket. And I think BA aren't one of those that necessarily insist on immediate ticketing.

Of course, by the time the push comes to shove, most of the space is gone, so unless QF want to simply just put up for the price of a cash ticket in lieu of no award space, naturally they'll scramble a half-baked solution like you had been offered.

Hope you kept the LH F booking.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Still lucky to find it though - LH F is quite rare, even if SQ KF having a bit more muscle in the game.



Sheesh, what a mess from QF.

I'm surprised QF can't find out why the etix was not attached to the booking correctly. More surprising is why they couldn't just force the issue if need be, i.e. reconfirm the flights they had organised, reissue the etix and be on the way. If the seats had disappeared, I find that hard to believe, because it seems there was a reservation, just not a ticket. And I think BA aren't one of those that necessarily insist on immediate ticketing.

Of course, by the time the push comes to shove, most of the space is gone, so unless QF want to simply just put up for the price of a cash ticket in lieu of no award space, naturally they'll scramble a half-baked solution like you had been offered.

Hope you kept the LH F booking.

I sure did keep the LH F booking

 

[anat0l]

Oneworld should really be treating its passengers better in these sorts of circumstances. Insolvency of its members is nothing new. By now they should have a process in place. Two weeks out is pathetic.

Only thoughts I can think of is whether QF wanted to wait until it was time-critical before they blinked on any AB bookings. After all, some sort of process may have been put in place to ensure AB was still flying, so what happens if that happened after QF had made all of these changes to AB bookings?

While we all would have been saying, "No problems QF, you were proactive and ensured these bookings," a bunch of others may have said that QF took unnecessary action on their bookings when all would have been fine.

What doesn't help in this case is AB is being a total backside (to put nicely) about their state of affairs, too. If they intend to cease long haul flying, then don't just say it - do it. Planes stop flying, flight schedules are withdrawn and all relevant tickets are cancelled. I imagine they don't want to do the last one as there may be some sort of legal thing which would be in their better interests not to cancel until the last moment (no one to sue them for fraud anyway - they have no money to pay plaintiffs). Once the notice of cancellation comes through, every party would be able to be forced to act and probably helps in some insurance cases, e.g. can claim a loss on the sale of a ticket to a customer due to the insolvency of another carrier. The only customers potentially in the lurch would only, really be those who are flying AB on AB ticket stock.

I can't think of any alliance which has any formal process in place to manage a partner going into the drink. When Star Alliance lost Ansett, what processes occurred then?

 

[anat0l]

I sure did keep the LH F booking

That peace of mind was more to ensure you're still going where you need to go, not to ensure that you get a chance to sample up to 80 different single malts.

 

[serfty]

Only thoughts I can think of is whether QF wanted to wait until it was time-critical before they blinked on any AB bookings.

Why? The princesses' AB flight had already been canceled.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Why? The princesses' AB flight had already been canceled.

AB did rebook some pax on other routes whose flights were cancelled. QF would have been hoping that AB would do the same for me I'd say.

 

[anat0l]

Why? The princesses' AB flight had already been canceled.

From what I understood from the reports, they had been only "cancelled" by some blanket announcement (viz. "long haul operations will be suspended"), but not officially through booking channels, viz. if you checked your ticket status no matter who issued it, the flight still appeared to be up and running. This is why it's really annoying that if AB was going to not operate those flights, they cancelled them properly and posthaste rather than leaving open "valid bookings" on flights that would either never or had nearly no chance of operating.

Otherwise, had AB actually cancelled all of those flights, all ticket issuers would have received a notification via booking channels that those flights are now cancelled and thus new options could be processed.

In a sense, AB should handle rebooking those pax, though given that they're unlikely to operate the replacement flights themselves, their organisational nightmare would be needing to get tickets endorsed on other carriers, especially when it isn't their ticket stock. They probably don't care too much as since they don't have much cash, they don't really have much of a drive to sort pax out as opposed to paying off creditors.

Funny enough, if QF asked to go back to AB (seriously?) but the ticket clearly said the flight was cancelled, I'd probably make some baloney story that I already did contact AB and they told me that they'd be doing S*A. To be honest, that's probably just about what would happen if one were to contact AB, so it's not really lying.

 

[serfty]

That is no t the impression I had from this:

So the inevitable has happened and my Award booking has been cancelled.

 

[williamsf1]

Air Berlin update .... BURN WHILE YOU CAN!!!
(translated from German)

we have good news for you: From now on you can redeem miles. The mile route is also possible on flights with Etihad Airways and with partners on the ground again.

Etihad Airways

You can earn premium and status miles on flights throughout the Etihad Airways network. Etihad Airways currently offers 42 weekly connections from Germany and 14 weekly connections from Switzerland to Abu Dhabi and further to over 50 destinations. Also for Etihad Airways flights in the past weeks, the miles are now credited to you. This means that the mile-crossing is complete. The relevant stretch network as well as the mileage collection table can be found here.

Mileage stamps for partners on the ground

Even with a number of partners on the ground, the mile mark is active again. With Sixt, AVIS, Europcar, Hertz, HRS, Shoop and online shopping, as well as our hotel and car rental portal, you will again benefit from the usual mile markings - also retroactive for all the miles that you have seen in the last weeks of these Partners have not yet been credited. This is the reason why your corner is completely covered. The list of our active miles partners is continually updated and can be viewed here.

Redeem miles in the new "topbonus pop-up shop"

We are especially pleased to announce that you can now redeem miles in the new "topbonus pop-up shop". From 10,000 bonus miles you have the option to purchase vouchers, For example of Sixt, Secret Escapes and HelloFresh with the following voucher values:
20 euros for 10,000 miles
50 euros for 20,000 miles
100 euros for 50,000 miles (from next week)
In addition, a selection of attractive premium products with additional payment is available. Our premium offer is expanded weekly.

The new online bonus shop is available to all participants worldwide, except USA. Premium products can be purchased from participants who order from Germany, Austria or Switzerland and have a delivery address in these countries. The order is only available online.

We are working on high-speed trips to reactivate the mile-crossing with other partners and to extend the offer for you. Stay tuned.