Lufthansa flights prices more expensive after Air Berlin takeover

It’s been over two weeks since the last ever Air Berlin flight landed on October 27th and anyone who has bought domestic tickets since then has almost certainly noticed the difference.
Passengers flying domestically are paying on average 32.5 percent more for short haul flights compared to four weeks ago, according to an analysis carried out by MyDealz.de. The shopping portal analyzed prices on 25 short and medium haul routes in October and again in November before coming to its conclusions.

They found that on working days, average short-haul prices in November were up 26 percent. At weekends, the increase was even greater at 38.9 percent. On medium-haul flights, the working-day price rise averaged 4.28 percent but the weekend fare was down by 42 percent. But price increases on the worst-affected routes are much higher still, with business-class airfares between Berlin and Frankfurt up 60 percent while business fliers on the Munich-Düsseldorf route faced an eye-watering 300-percent price hike.

In the most extreme example found by MyDealz.de, a return flight between Munich and Düsseldorf (Weeze Airport) during the week was four times more expensive after Air Berlin finally went bust.

Since the insolvency of Air Berlin, demand is massively exceeding supply on many nationwide routes, a fact which seems to be driving up prices. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr estimates that 60,000 seats are currently missing on German domestic flights, with most of Air Berlin's planes sitting idle on the tarmac.

Mydealz admits that such average comparisons over a brief period of time should be treated with caution. But the research shows that Air Berlin’s demise has boosted ticket prices. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr admitted as much, telling Bild newspaper: “The few seats we can still offer are of course scarce and expensive.”

The company would only say that, due to the increased demand of domestic flights, on certain days the cheapest flights sell out quicker and as a result are no longer available,

Spohr recently announced that the company would add 1,000 new domestic flights per month in response to their former competitor’s bankruptcy and a subsequent rise in flight prices for popular nationwide routes.

In October, Lufthansa boss Spohr said after announcing Lufthansa would buy up more than half of Berlin’s aircraft that while flying would not become more expensive in general, he could not rule out the possibility that prices would rise on some routes.

The end of Air Berlin and of the UK’s Monarch Airlines plus the planned sale of bankrupt Alitalia may herald the kind of consolidation in Europe that the US airline industry has gone through — leading to a lack of competition that hurts consumers.

In the United States, four airlines – United, Delta, American and, a distant fourth, Southwest – now control three-fourths of air travel and many routes are serviced by a single carrier. Travelers in the United States face higher fares and poorer service as the airlines rack up billions in profit.