Emirates Spent Twenty-Two Years Trying to Land in Berlin

Germany confirmed on 10 September that it will open Berlin to United Arab Emirates carriers, ending a fight Emirates has been losing since 2003. Under the previous bilateral air services agreement, UAE airlines were limited to four German points, and Emirates had long since filled them with Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Dusseldorf. Berlin – the capital, and a market with no Gulf hub connection of its own – stayed out of reach for twenty-two years, not because anyone doubted the demand but because the traffic rights did not exist.

The new arrangement adds a fifth point to the route schedule for UAE national carriers, capped at seven flights a week, with no fifth-freedom rights attached. That last detail matters: the airlines can carry passengers between the UAE and Berlin, but cannot pick up traffic in Berlin and carry it onward to a third country. The announcement came during the UAE president’s state visit to Germany, alongside a much larger economic package that included a pledged 40 billion euro investment programme, which is the usual shape of these deals – aviation access is rarely negotiated on aviation grounds alone.

Lufthansa has spent two decades arguing against exactly this, on the grounds that Gulf carriers use Frankfurt and Munich to feed a hub strategy that draws German long-haul traffic away from German airlines. That objection has not gone away, and the seven-a-week cap and the absence of fifth-freedom rights read like the compromise that made the decision possible. Berlin Brandenburg, meanwhile, has struggled to attract long-haul service since it opened, and a daily Gulf connection is a meaningful addition to a route map that has looked thin at the intercontinental end.

Abu Dhabi moved first in practice. Etihad announced the following day that Abu Dhabi-Berlin flights will launch on 15 October, which is a remarkably short runway between a government decision and a published start date and suggests the schedule was drawn up in anticipation. Emirates has not yet confirmed its own launch date. For travellers, the gain is a one-stop connection from Berlin to South and Southeast Asia, Australia and East Africa that previously required a domestic or intra-European hop to Frankfurt or Munich first.

Sources: Aviation Week, The National