Airports Across the Wall

While West Germany's Lufthansa was stonewalling over proposed new transatlantic air fares, another long-established pattern was being challenged in one of the world's more profitable aviation markets: the divided city of Berlin. In this case, the initiative came from East Germany, which eagerly wants more passengers to use East Berlin's Schonefeld Airport and is making its bid at a time when Four-Power negotiations on the status of the city appear to be on the verge of success (see THE WORLD).

Schoenefeld has long operated in the shadow of West Berlin's bustling Tempelhof air terminal. All together, 5.5 million air passengers a year stream in and out of West Berlin compared to the 1.5 million who travel to or from East Berlin. Lately, travelers from West Berlin have discovered that Interflug, the East German flag carrier, offers some of the world's greatest fare bargains to those willing to take a bus through the city's dividing wall. Interflug charges only $110 for a round trip to Istanbul, $354 to Teheran and $152 to Beirut. And the flights are direct. Passengers flying out of Tempelhof would have to change planes at Frankfurt and pay a Western airline $300 for a round-trip ticket to Istanbul, $572 to Teheran and $408 to Beirut.

Fat Prize. Schoenefeld officials are trying to boost traffic further by persuading some West European carriers to use the airport's expanded facilities. Since the end of World War II, air service to West Berlin has been the exclusive preserve of the occupying powers' designated airlines: Pan American, British European Airways and Air France. The run has been a particularly rich prize for Pan Am. The line's Boeing 727s log 96 flights a day in winter and 117 in summer--usually with more than two-thirds of their seats filled.

No longer willing to be locked out of this lucrative trade, other West European airlines are pressing for landing rights in West Berlin. Alitalia, SAS and KLM have been particularly active, but Sabena and Swissair have also put out feelers. Much to the consternation of Pan Am, the U.S. is willing to welcome additional carriers, but Britain is so far unwilling to agree.

Consequently, several of the carriers are now talking to East German officials about using Schoenefeld. KLM, in fact, now stops there "on demand" if enough passengers on its Amsterdam-Moscow flight want to get off or on in East Berlin. The airlines' interest in East Berlin is genuine enough, but it might flag if a new agreement permits expanded air service between Tempelhof and Western capitals.

Interflug's low fares also pose a problem. After studying the possibility of using Schoenefeld, Swissair concluded that it could not compete there profitably. For the same reason, Austrian Airlines, which has a mutual landing agreement that permits it to operate out of Schoenefeld, does not make use of the privilege. If East Germany really intends to attract Western airlines, it will have to raise Interflug's subsidized fares on competing routes, and that in turn might well make Schoenefeld less attractive to travelers. But even the highly preliminary talks held so far suggest that Tempelhof and the three Western powers are not likely to be able to keep West Berlin traffic to themselves indefinitely.

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