Germania CEO Update – Everything Has To Be Built On Our Own
Germania CEO Karsten Balke gives a brief history of this independent airline and talks strategic partners and fleet expansion. “As we are a small, independent airline… everything has to be built on our own”, he said. Mr Balke expresses interest in finding new strategic partners to finance upcoming aircraft deliveries and expansion.
Transcript
Karsten Balke:Germania is an airline, a German airline, independent airline with a lot of history. We started operations in 1979. Since '86, we are trading under Germania as a brand. We have a full charter and wet lease background and transferred or swapped our business in 2009-2010 more to scheduled services, but still being like a leisure carrier serving all the Mediterranean destinations, the warm water destinations around the Mediterranean Sea, and also our specialty to the Near and Middle East, some scheduled services. When it comes to legacy carriers, we are cooperating very deeply with So we're taking a lot of allotments on to our flights to the Mediterranean Sea especially. On the other side, against the low-cost carriers, we are providing a full-service package at affordable costs. I mean, this has been a longer process because as we have been a loyal Boeing customer for more than 30 years, obviously at some point you have to say goodbye to see what others have to offer. And so in 2010, we made our first step towards the Airbus fleet, buying a few aircraft. And as we were growing in the last couple of years, as it was not enough, we had to enter a new contract in 2016 for 25 aircraft, A320neo Pratt Whitney powered, to be delivered from 2020. Oh, this order is designed in order to replace our existing fleet. As Germania has been buying aircraft in a period of 10 years, we had to renew our fleet, so that is part of a renewal and replacement of our existing fleet. As we are a small and independent airline, of course everything has to be built on our own, so we are out in order to find strategic partners, especially when it comes to financing of these aircraft deliveries. But so far, I mean, we're doing quite well and hopefully it stays as it is. After the insolvency of Air Berlin especially, I mean, there came up so much opportunities for us being a German carrier, knowing the markets. As well as Air Berlin, we are in the touristic markets, so there was a strong demand for these leisure carriers to come up with some new routes and new bases, what we did. That has been the case, and especially what we did is from last year to this year, we added another 7 aircraft in order to strengthen our bases in Berlin-Tegel especially, but also Zurich, Nuremberg, and Bremen, Dresden, or smaller airports as well, because being a small airline, we serve also decentralized airports within Germany.
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