Air Berlin's new chief executive announced a broad three-part turnaround programme to return Germany's second-biggest airline to operating profit next year, but provided few details of how that target would be reached. Air Berlin ran into trouble after a spate of acquisitions left it piled with debt and a mix of routes serving sun-seeking German tourists, business travellers, and point to point.
Funding from Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, which has a 29 percent stake in the German company, has kept the carrier afloat as it posted deepening losses.
In his first public comments since becoming CEO on February 1, Stefan Pichler outlined a restructuring programme split into three phases focused on improved management, capacities and profitability.
The airline would set its managers measurable targets, divest non-core businesses and seek to win market share in its most important markets, Pichler said, without saying how Air Berlin aimed to lure more customers.
Pichler, a former manager at Lufthansa and former CEO of Thomas Cook Germany, came to Air Berlin from Fiji Airways, which under his stewardship reported record profits for 2014.
Air Berlin is due to report 2014 results on March 30. Former CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said in November that estimates for an operating loss of 300 million euros ($335 million) in 2014, following a loss of 232 million in 2013, were plausible.
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