I actually didn't realize AC dropped BER altogether, I thought they were served non-stop year round? But apparently not, obviously I haven't followed closely. But I thought this route was fairly important, I know it's hard with Germany because they already have two giant hubs with lots of service to YYZ, so BER would be destination #3. But I would've thought Germany is large enough in two way travel with Canada to justify Berlin as well. I have no idea the demographics that support it though, maybe it is more a destination for the artsy young travellers, and Bohemian hipster kinds, and doesn't have the business or leisure demand that FRA or MUC have? In some ways, if you lumped Berlin in with "Eastern Europe" (it was very much in the eastern zone geographically, despite the city itself being split), then you can see there are struggles for travel to Eastern Europe.
Other than LOT from Poland (which seems relatively stable and has been a long term *Alliance partner), there is fairly limited service to Eastern Europe. I believe Toronto and/or Montreal had service to Prague, Bucharest, Budapest, and Kiev at one point (some obvious cancellations of course). But just shows how the market is so far behind Western Europe, it's shocking when you actually think about it. And it's not a Canada specific thing, it's those countries. Only two Eastern European/Balkan countries even has a long haul carrier (LOT from Poland and Air Serbia). Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, N. Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova AND Greece all lack their own transcontinental airline ie. no heavies in their fleet. That's absolutely bizarre to me, and wasn't always the case. At least some of those countries' airlines flew long haul at one point (Czech Airlines, Tarom from Romania, Malev from Budapest, Olympic from Greece are the ones I can remember specifically). But now the best scenario is just to still be in business, with only have short haul limited fleets of narrow bodies, if they're lucky! Many airlines just folded entirely, and now the dominant carrier at many airports is Ryanair or some crap, not the same as a flag carrier off to New York in a 747. Just so weird to actually look at and absorb it, the real underperformance of Eastern Europe, even all these years later. The fact that even a country like Greece, with all of it's famous sites, history, massive tourism, and cultural awareness across the globe, doesn't have its own long haul carrier anymore?! Something very concerning about that IMO, Greece is too important to not sustain its own foreign carrier (I think all countries of a certain importance should have at least one main overseas carrier, it isn't too much to ask considering at one point many of these countries had an overseas carrier. Greece isn't even part of Eastern Europe at all, but it's geographically connected to the Slavic world, so has some similarities (airline failure being a commonality lol). Just overall a bizarre observation, never sat down and put it in writing to see just how bad the aviation sector is there. It's actually substantially worse than even South and SE Asian countries (most SE Asian and South Asian countries have airlines with long haul fleets, even Ariana Afghanistan lol).
To be honest, even Italy deserves an honourable mention and would earn observer status in the Eastern Europe family of airline chaos. They basically were in the same boat as most of these countries, but they were not the same, Italy is a much bigger deal economically, population, cultural importance, tourism, etc. Yet their aviation sector is more like Hungary than it is like France lol. They luckily had a relaunch of a national carrier (ITA Airways, descended from Alitalia), but it was weak from the start financially. Within only a few months of operation, the big Euro hawks came circling (LH and AF/KL). After some back and forth, LH emerged the victor and ITA will become a daughter in the LH family (just like Austrian, Brussels Airlines, SWISS, Discover, and Eurowings).
I don't know why, but for some reason it feels weird that they will be part of LH... It will be the trouble child in the family I suspect, always making a mess and not behaving like the other kids (ie. the other airlines). I am not taking a side here, just stating my observation, but all of LH's other acquisitions are somewhat part of the German realm (German language/culture is dominant, shared economic strength, basically all on strong footing economically and stature). Not to diss Belgian, Swiss, or Austrian culture or to imply it's all just German, but they are undeniably linked in much stronger ways. There's only one tiny province in North Italy that is German speaking, and it's so different from the rest of Italy in a lot of ways, much more similar to Austria (where the rest of the province of Tyrol is located). There's even seccessionist movements, but not for independence, but to actually join Austria. And it actually has some kind of autonomous status within Italy. So basically a small part of the country and not enough to make Italy overall a Germanic realm in any sense of the word. It will be interesting if ITA rises and becomes like its adopted sisters, or like it's birth mom Alitalia lol! The history nerd in me wonders if Germany just likes dominating Italy whenever it can, WWII ideas transforming to current times. According to Wikipedia, not only did LH buyout small Italian carrier Air Dolomiti in 1999, but they operated a division called Lufthansa Italia at one point (pathetically bad operation, only lasted from Feb. 2 2009 to October 29 2011, not even 3 years). So they always seemed interested in Italy, even though the economics and track history of carriers screamed risky. If you ask me, they should have let AF/KL take it on, risks and all. Almost like it's revenge for AF/KL taking SAS from *Alliance. Scandinavia and Germany are very connected in many ways, LH made way more sense here. I think they should make a new deal that LH gives ITA to AF/KL, and then SAS goes to LH lol, makes way more sense.
I feel weird talking about carving up Europe and exposing some of these details, please nobody take this the wrong way. I'm definitely not implying some Germanic superiority at all, just making these observations. I'm no expert on European relations, so not sure what's at play between smaller Eastern countries and the big dogs, we tend to think of France/UK or UK/Germany rivalries, but they are all in similar leagues. Adding somewhere like Bulgaria into the mix, it's bizarre because they are in a different league (per capita of course, smaller countries with a high GDP per capita are seen as more important and connected). Bulgaria is so much lower than everyone else in terms of per capita GDP and other measures. And shockingly Greece is 2nd poorest, that blew my mind, I thought for sure it'd at least be above Romania! Even if Greece doesn't have a national long haul carrier of its own, Athens is decently connected to many global cities, and has a notable tourist economy at least. Ranking below Romania?! Shame, they can do better.
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