Airberlin Cancels Dallas Route – Check Your Reservations

a white airplane with red writing on it

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AirBerlin was scheduled to commence flights between Düsseldorf and Dallas Fort Worth from 6 May 2016 but, per airlineroute, the airline has cancelled the service before it has even commenced.

Back in November, airberlin announced new routes from Düsseldorf to Dallas, San Francisco and Boston to great fanfare but, it would seem that, the first of these route will now not be happening.

For the time being this is the only comment I’ve been able to find from the airline:

For now, airberlin is indeed not going to operate the route between Düsseldorf and Dallas during the summer 2016. The route was planned to start at the 6th of May. Passengers who have already booked a flight will be contacted and offered to be rebooked on an alternative flight.

It’s not clear what’s caused the route cancellation and, with fuel prices this low, one wonders what went so badly wrong with the economics of the route that cancellation was the best option.

The route was set to be served by airberlin’s A330-200 aircraft (of which they have enough to serve the route) so the lack of aircraft is most probably not the reason for the cancellation. I can only speculate that bookings have been so far short of expectations that the airline has decided to cut its losses now rather than to wait to see what happened when the route went live.

The route was set to be operated 4x/week on the following schedule:

AB7010 DUS 09:15 – 12:50 DFW 332 (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun)
AB7011 DFW 14:40 – 07:05+1 day DUS (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun)

Bottom Line

If you were booked on to one or more of those flights don’t wait to be contacted by the airline – get in touch as soon as you can to make sure you’re booked on to a flight that suits you best.

While this isn’t necessarily a sign of things to come (different routes can have very different economics), I would keep a very close eye on any reservations that you may have with airberlin for the other two North American routes that are scheduled to start in May:

  • Düsseldorf – San Francisco – From 6 May 2016
  • Düsseldorf – Boston – From 7 May 2016

I’m not saying that anything bad is going to happen with those routes…I’m just saying that there’s no harm in keeping a close eye on them.