This year, airberlin is once again flying thousands of guests to their family and friends on the holidays. Between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve alone, the second largest German airline will complete approximately 1,000 flights throughout the route network. The days with the highest travel volume for airberlin are in the Christmas week between 21st to 28th December. Whether to Mallorca, New York or Dusseldorf: Even on Christmas, airberlin employees make sure that guests reach their destination safely and on time. Here, three of them describe their duties during the holidays.
Andre Horsten, airberlin Duty Manager Airport Operations at the Dusseldorf hub
„At Christmas, I am at the Airport Control Center in Dusseldorf from five o’clock in the morning to noon in order to bring travellers to their destination without delay, even on the bank holidays. As Duty Manager at the Airport Control Center, I make sure that airberlin guests at the Dusseldorf hub reach their connecting flights on time and that all flight and passenger activities run smoothly. Among other duties, we are responsible for assigning a target called ‘Offblock-time’ for each airberlin flight. This is the time at which the flight is begin taxiing. This is very important because no flight can take off without this assigned Offblock-time.”
Marcus Ciesielski, Chief Technical Pilot, Airbus fleet
“Flying at Christmas is always special. The anticipation of the flight guests looking forward to seeing their friends and families again can almost be felt on board. When I see the happy faces exiting the plane, I know why I enjoy my profession so much and why I spend Christmas above the clouds. Additionally, you always feel a certain positive connection with the people who you work with over the Christmas period. This year at Christmas I am flying guests to Miami and hopefully I’ll also have the opportunity to enjoy the seaside and the warm Miami sun. We will be celebrating a belated Christmas around the tree on 27th December.”
Christian Junge, Network Operations Manager at airberlin
„In the Network Operations Center of the airberlin group, our team of 65 employees work round the clock to coordinate all airberlin aircraft movements and passenger flows. As on all the other 364 days of the year, on Christmas Eve we also ensure that our guests get to their destination smoothly and on time. In the case of a white Christmas, it can sometimes become quite hectic for us in the control room as we coordinate the de-icing procedures.”
Source / Author: airberlin
Photo: airberlin