beachbumflyer

Spanish football team Barcelona cancelled yesterday a flight with Air Berlin
from Pisa to Chicago because Air Berlin refuses to train employees to speak catalan nor includes catalan on inflight messages.
Air Berlin kept about 125.000€ to cancelled the flight. F.C. Barcelona hasn't said who paid for the B-747 that replaced Air Berlin's A-330.

beachbumflyer

Capt. PPRuNe,
Why was this thread moved? Air Berlin is a German airline, the flight was from Italy to the USA, and USA's Major League Football was paying for
the flight.
Many people who read the Spanish Forum probably know the news.
And there are threads in Rumors & News that relate to Rest of the World
& Non-English Language Forums and are not moved.

VAFFPAX

So... who's fault is it. Air Berlin's? I don't think so. Air Berlin is, as you point out, German. Why would they want to train c/c to speak Catalan when Spanish will do? Yes, we all know how much Catalans dislike speaking Spanish, but that is no excuse.

S.

BYALPHAINDIA

Why use AB, Should use Alitalia, Iberia, Or Spanair.

Or charter an Air Comet A310.

Groundloop

Could have been cheapest!!?? Rather a stupid question, really.

WHBM

As most Ryanair crews out of Stansted seem unable to speak English, presumably all British football teams will stop using them as well.

AircraftOperations

Everything comes down to cost and availability at the end of the day.

Not many carriers aim to keep a week or two free in the hope that a football team will take their aircraft to the USA during the peak summer season.

And as far as I know from Ryanair pilots that I know , Ryanair don't operate a lot of ad-hoc charters. - Though this may change as the poor economic climate continues.