UAE carriers’ desire to gain more landing rights into German cities is not a high priority for Angela Merkel’s government, but the opening of much delayed new Berlin airport may see some movement on the issue, senior officials told Arabian Business.
Dubai’s Emirates Airline and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways have been looking to acquire further landings rights in Germany since 2004. The carrier have so far been unable to secure the extra capacity they desire and a senior government official said this was not a high priority for the Chancellor Merkel’s government.
“No, it’s not [a high priority]… They can put it down on the list,” Ambassador Dr Heinrich Kreft, director of public diplomacy and dialogue among civilisations, told Arabian Business in an interview at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.
“Lufthansa is in such a downturn right now… This is the debate we are having in the aviation community,” he added.
Many in the industry have regularly claimed the federal government’s stance is due to lobbying from Lufthansa, despite this being denied by Germany’s largest carrier.
“[The federal government] is blocking it on behalf of Lufthansa,” Burkhard Kieker, CEO of VisitBerlin, the city’s tourism authority, said in an interview. “Lufthansa tries to block it but they don’t fly themselves and that is a bad situation.”
However, Kieker believed the opening of the much delayed US$3.2bn Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport, which was due to open this year but has been delayed until late 2013, would help to give the issue some urgency.
“I think when the airport opens we will see some movement… We don’t care who flies we want connections… Welcome to Etihad and welcome to Emirates,” he said.
Under the current UAE-German agreement, UAE carriers can fly to up to five German cities. UAE carriers argue they would like to fly to more cities and are reluctant to give up their already reluctant scheduled routes to switch to Berlin.
“Looking at the agreement that we have between the UAE and Germany and if you compare that to anything else we have in Europe we come to the conclusion this is the most liberal one that exists between the UAE and Europe,” Joachim Steinbach, a senior Lufthansa executive, told Arabian Business last year.
Follow us on
