In addition to the services from Franco-Swiss-German airport Basel (TMIS, 5 December), Air Berlin is offering non-stop flights between northern Bavarian Nuremberg and Malta as from next summer’s schedule. The flight will operate on Sunday afternoons at family-friendly time. While the flight might cost a bit more than Air Malta’s flights from Frankfurt and Munich, people from the area will save in driving costs and the difference in parking charges. The Nuremberg flight will also tap the north-east Bavarian corner and a part of Thuringia state currently linked via Leipzig, an Air Malta route that will stop at the end of the winter schedule.

The aircraft used is a Bombardier Q400 fast turboprop aircraft with 76 seats, with a flight time of three hours, so it only takes half-an-hour longer than it would have taken were it operated with something like a 140-seat A319.

Fuel burn is 0.87t per hour on the Bombardier, compared to 2.5t per hour on the A319 or 2.4t for the Boeing 737-700 (that has the same capacity as the A319, although the B737-700/800 can have a slight but sometimes crucial cost advantage over the A319/320), which, even with the slightly slower speed (thus more flying hours) still makes the fuel cost impact significantly smaller if there is only a limited market size (i.e., if it is not expected that more seats will be sold than can be accommodated in the Q400).

Combined with much lower capital costs and lower charges, this helps reduce trip costs enormously. Therefore this ‘smaller’ airport can be connected to Malta without Air Berlin directly having to risk throwing in 140-190 seats (costs) and probably just selling 80 seats (revenue) anyway.

Should there be a real surge in demand, Air Berlin can still upgrade to a larger aircraft, but starting like this has a lower risk and cost input to open up the route. Developing the Nuremberg route for summer was suggested by the writer in this paper some time ago.

Air Berlin’s fleet of Bombardier Q400 is operated by LGW, a company that originally operated domestic premium price routes with a few 19-seat Dornier 228s. The Q400s were bought by Air Berlin and are leased to LGW who then operate them on behalf of Air Berlin in Air Berlin colours. LGW today no longer operates ‘own’ flights. With the Q400s, Air Berlin maintains routes from smaller airports, or on short haul flights and frequencies, on which big jets do not make sense. It currently has 10 Q400s in its fleet.

The biggest European customer for the Q400 is low-cost giant FlyBE with 58 planes already delivered (a few of these being operated by FlyBE for the resurrected Olympic). Other European operators include Lufthansa (with its Augsburg Airways and Austrian divisions) and Luxair, as well as Croatia Airlines.