Air Berlin Files for Bankruptcy; Israeli Flights Unaffected for Now

Hogan has since left the Gulf company, which last month also announced that it was exiting another so-called Equity Alliance partner with the sale of a stake in Swiss regional carrier Darwin to Slovenia's Adria Airways.

The Emirati national airline said it continues to have codeshares and other business relationships with Air Berlin and will support its management.

Air Berlin's insolvency came after its main shareholder, Etihad, stated it would not give further financial support to the German carrier.

Meanwhile, the German government has said to step in and plans to provide Air Berlin with a temporary credit of 150 million euros (177 million US dollars), enabling the company to continue running.

Irish low-priced airline Ryanair Holdings PLC late Tuesday said it has lodged competition complaints with the German Bundeskartellamt and the European Commission to "block" German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG from potentially taking over Air Berlin PLC.

Germany's biggest airline, Lufthansa is now in talks with Air Berlin to take over sections of operations as part of a wider restructuring of Air Berlin, which ran up a loss previous year of about €782m euros and has debts totalling almost €1.2bn.

Talks between Etihad and TUI, Europe's largest tour operator, about forming a joint venture holiday airline by merging TUIfly with Air Berlin's leisure airline Niki collapsed earlier this year.

Air Berlin will continue to operate as a member of the oneworld alliance group as they have filed for the proceedings required to self-administrate as it continues its restructuring process.

Ryanair complained to the European Commission and Germany's competition regulator, the Bundeskartellampt, that the government and Lufthansa were conspiring to carve up Air Berlin while excluding competitors and ignoring anti-trust and state aid rules.

The Irish no-frills airline claimed there was an "obvious conspiracy" playing out between the German government, Lufthansa and Air Berlin, to carve up the latter's assets while excluding competitors.

Their flight schedule remains valid.

Etihad said that it withdrew funding after Air Berlin's operations deteriorated at an "unprecedented pace" in recent months.

Etihad confirmed that it expects the German airline to continue operations during administration.

The German government, like Italy's before it with Alitalia, is now helping to find a solution to protect jobs. It is also extremely costly for Etihad, hard on the heels of Alitalia's Jun-2017 entry into administration.

An aircraft of German carrier Air Berlin seen at Berlin-Tegel airport in Berlin on June 9 this year. If you booked direct with Air Berlin you won't have ATOL protection.