Air Berlin PLC & Co. Luftverkehrs KG (: AB1), branded as airberlin or airberlin.com, is Germany's second largest airline, after Lufthansa, and Europe's seventh largest airline in terms of passengers carried. It maintains hubs at Berlin Tegel Airport and Düsseldorf Airport and operates a route network that includes a total of 17 German cities, some European metropolitan and several leisure destinations in Southern Europe and North Africa, as well as intercontinental services to destinations in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Air Berlin is a member of the Oneworld alliance, and owns the subsidiary Belair in Switzerland while the sale of its 49% stake Austrian subsidiary NIKI to Etihad Airways was announced in December 2016. It is listed on the . Etihad Airways is the largest shareholder, having increased its shareholding to 29.21% in 2011. Air Berlin is headquartered in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, a borough of Berlin.

Originally registered as Air Berlin USA, the company was founded in 1978 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Lelco, an American agricultural enterprise headquartered in Oregon, to operate charter flights on behalf of German tour operators from Berlin Tegel Airport, mostly to Mediterranean holiday resorts. As a United States airline, Air Berlin was able to access the West Berlin airline market. During the Cold War, Berlin's special political status meant that the air corridors into and out of Tegel Airport could only be used by airlines registered in France, the United Kingdom or the United States. The airline's headquarters were initially at Tegel Airport. Leonard Lundgren was the first chairman.

...
Wikipedia