GERMANY: easyJet Flight Diverted To Germany After Pilot Was Informed Of Suspicious Talk By Three Passengers

An easyJet flight to London has made an unscheduled stop in Germany after the pilot became concerned about a suspicious conversation on board.

Three male passengers have been arrested, Cologne police said in a statement.

The EasyJet flight made an unscheduled stop in Germany after the pilot became concerned about a suspicious conversation on board.

The plane coming from the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana landed at Cologne-Bonn airport at about 6.30pm on Saturday, after passengers reported that the men were talking about "terrorist matters", Cologne police said.

Airport authorities said in a statement that the 151 passengers on board disembarked the plane using emergency slides and were taken to a transit gate where they were checked by police.

Federal police seized a backpack that belonged to one of the men, and exploded it outside of the aircraft, police said. They gave no information on the contents of the backpack and said officials continued to investigate the backpack.

The men continued to be questioned late Saturday evening. Other passengers were also being questioned, police said.

Take-offs and landings were suspended for three hours, causing 10 flights to be diverted to other airports and delays to over a dozen more.

A spokesman for the German federal police said the pilot decided to land the aircraft in Cologne after passengers told airline personnel they had heard the men using words including "bomb" and "explosive".

An EasyJet spokesperson said the captain took the decision to divert the plane as a precaution so additional security checks could be carried out.

In compliance with the local authorities guidance passengers disembarked to allow additional security checks to be performed,the spokesperson said.

We plan to operate the flight tomorrow morning and so are providing all passengers with hotel accommodation and refreshments along with regular updates.

We thank passengers for their understanding. The safety of easyJet's passengers and crew is our highest priority.

No comment was immediately available from federal police.

GERMANY: Germania Airline

Germania, legally Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH, is a privately owned German airline with its headquarters in Berlin. Germania operates scheduled and charter flights to destinations in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from several German bases. It carried 2.5 million passengers in 2009 and had around 850 employees as of summer 2014.

The airline was founded in April 1978 as Special Air Transport or SAT for short in Cologne and started operations on 5 September 1978. with a Fokker F-27. In November 1978, a Sud Aviation Caravelle was purchased from LTU, which was replaced by two used Boeing 727-100 from Hapag-Lloyd Flug (now TUIfly). Germania Express has adopted the IATA code "ST" which was previously used by Yanda Airlines.

In spring 1986, the company was re-organised and its name was changed to Germania on 1 June 1986. For many years, Germania's main area of doing business were charter services for TUI, Condor and Neckermann Reisen – an area in which Germania earned a reputation for offering the lowest prices. In 1992 the registered office was relocated to Tegel. In the same year Germania won the bid for flight services between the old and new capital of Germany (Bonn and Berlin) on behalf of the German government, establishing a short-lived Beamten-Shuttle (German for “shuttle for civil servants”).

In 1998, the airline pioneered the use of aircraft for advertising in Germany advertisers included Siemens and various tour operators. In the same year, Germania began to lease more and more planes to other airlines such as Hapag-Lloyd Express, Maersk and Delta.

In June 2003, Germania started to offer tickets directly to passengers under the brand Germania Express (often shortened to gexx). Following a purchase of a 64% stake in dba (now part of Air Berlin) on 28 March 2005, Germania wet-leased 12 Fokker 100 aircraft to dba. At the same time, dba took over Germania Express's 15 established low-cost routes and thus absorbed Germania's gexx brand. Germania on the other hand, with all aircraft having been leased to other airlines, no longer offered routes directly to passengers.

While the partial merger between Germania and dba was already reversed in the summer of 2005, the cooperation of Germania and dba was extended to 14 Fokker 100 aircraft. Air Berlin chief, Joachim Hunold, was tasked by Germania owner, Hinrich Bischoff, to take charge of the future of the company shortly before Bischoff's death on 11 November 2005. However, an agreement between Bischoff and Hunold was not reached in the end as Bischoff's heirs refused to accept.

Germania relaunched scheduled flights under its own brand name out of Berlin and Düsseldorf beginning with the 2008 summer schedule.

The foundations were laid for the first maintenance hangar at Berlin Brandenburg Airport on 21 March 2011. Germania plans to use the hangar together with Air Berlin once the airport becomes operational.

On 3 March 2014, Germania had its traffic rights for flights to Iraq revoked after an intervention by Iraqi Airways. On 12 March 2014, Germania was allowed to resume all operations to Iraq with the first flight resuming on the 17 March 2014.

In spring 2015, Germania announced to phase out all of their recently refurbished Boeing 737-700s by 2020 to become an all-Airbus operator.

Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH is a private company that had been founded and run for many years by Hinrich Bischoff, who died on 11 November 2005. His wife Ingrid Bischoff was the main shareholder, but she sold it. Germania has its headquarters at Riedemannweg 58, Berlin, Germany.

Germania Technik Brandenburg GmbH is a wholly owned aircraft maintenance subsidiary of Germania, based at Schönefeld.
In October 2011 it was reported that Bischoff had taken over Germania's charter partner Flynext (Flynext Luftverkehrs GmbH) from the Nuremberg-based regional airline entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl, Flynext having been set up earlier that year and operating two Airbus A319s on a wet-lease basis for Germania. Now called Germania Express (Germania Express Fluggesellschaft mbH), the new company took over the two Airbus A319s.
Germania Express in turn is the main shareholder of Gambia Bird, a airline based at Banjul, The Gambia. Gambia Bird however suspended operations on 30 December 2014.

In 2014, Germania founded Germania Flug as a new sub-company in Switzerland to operate leisure flights under the newly established HolidayJet brand in cooperation with Swiss tour operator Hotelplan.

Germania offers a wide range of some year-round and mainly seasonal leisure and some metropolitan routes from several German airports. From its bases, scheduled flights to Turkey, Kosovo, Israel and Lebanon are also offered, servicing minorities living in Germany and Austria.

Fleet
As of January 2016, the Germania fleet (excluding the Swiss subsidiary Germania Flug) consists of the following aircraft

Airbus A319-100----------------------------8

Airbus A321-200----------------------------4

Boeing 737-700----------------------------10

Total-------------------------------------22

Europe’s Most Competitive Airport Pairs and city pairs in S15 revealed

Pobeda became the latest carrier on the highly competitive city pair between Moscow and Sochi when it commenced services between Moscow Vnukovo and Sochi/Adler on 6 February. Aeroflot’s in-house LCC now serves the route with six daily flights. This summer, the link between Moscow and Sochi is the most highly competed route in Europe with a total of 10 carriers operating services between the two cities.

We look at several aspects such as aircraft type operated, weekly frequency, sector length and which other carriers may already be operating on the route. Typically around half of all new airlines services are on airport pairs that are not served by anyone else. (Coincidentally, out of 25 new services launched this week, 12 are already served by other carriers.) However, that means that around half of all new services are airlines entering a market already served by at least one other carrier. These existing carriers are not likely to take kindly to having their position challenged.

This got us wondering as to which were the most competitive routes within Europe, during the peak summer season, on both an airport pair and city pair basis. At this point the anna.aero data elves let out a big sigh and got to work to see what they could uncover. For summer we used the first week of August in 2015. When attaching airports to cities we used the IATA recommended allocations for the following 16 cities: Belfast, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Istanbul, London, Milan, Moscow, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Tenerife, Venice and Warsaw.

German airports to Antalya dominate summer airport pairs ranking
For this summer the following table reveals the airport pairs served by the highest number of airlines. Routes to Antalya from German airports appear five times among the top eight, with Cologne Bonn and Düsseldorf to Antalya both offering flights on eight different airlines. Two more ‘summer sun’ routes also appear in the rankings; Düsseldorf to Heraklion and Manchester to Palma de Mallorca. The final route is the Italian domestic link between Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa.

Moscow – Sochi/Adler most competitive city pair
If instead of considering airport pairs we examine city pairs within Europe, the most competitive markets now include a large number of markets from London. With six airports designated as serving the UK capital (Gatwick, Heathrow, London City, Luton, Southend and Stansted) it’s no surprise that London routes now feature prominently. However, only one city pair can beat the eight carriers between Cologne Bonn and Antalya, and Düsseldorf and Antalya as reported earlier in this analysis. And it does not involve London. Instead it is the Russian domestic route between Moscow and Sochi/Adler, which according to OAG Schedules Analyser data had a total of 10 different carriers serving the market this August.

Two other Moscow routes also appear with seven competing airlines. Moscow is served by three airports; Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo. Seven city pairs involving London are served by seven carriers; four in Spain, two in Greece and one each in Cyprus and Italy.

IRELAND: Ryanair Flies Cologne To Copenhagen And Berlin To Copenhagen

Ryanair launched two new routes from Cologne Bonn this week to Copenhagen and Berlin Schönefeld. Services to Schönefeld will operate 30 times weekly, while Copenhagen will see a daily flight. Services to the Danish capital were celebrated by: Maike Lyssy, Business Development & Aviation Marketing, Cologne Bonn Airport; Jan Möller, Head of Business Development, Cologne Bonn Airport; Tim Howe Schröder, Head of Sales and Marketing Manager, Ryanair; Markus Leopold, Marketing & Sales Executive, Ryanair; and the Ryanair crew of the inaugural flight.

Ryanair launched four new routes on the 2 and 3 September, of which three connect with Copenhagen (CPH). The airline will connect the Danish capital with Cologne Bonn (CGN), Madrid (MAD) and Rome Ciampino (CIA).

The ULCC will also connect the German airport of Cologne Bonn with Berlin Schönefeld (SXF). The domestic link will operate 30 times weekly according to OAG Schedules Analyser data. T

he only route that Ryanair will see direct competition on is the connection between the capital cities of Copenhagen and Madrid, a 2,057-kilometre sector already served by Iberia (daily) and Norwegian (daily).

All of the new routes will be served with at least a daily rotation.

On 3 September, Berlin Schönefeld celebrated the launch of Ryanair services to Cologne Bonn. The domestic 470-kilometre airport pair will face no direct competition, but airberlin and germanwings both offer multiple daily flights from Berlin Tegel to Cologne Bonn.

See how Cologne Bonn Airport’s FTWA compares to others from around the world.