Air Berlin carried no passengers to Malta this year, a spokeswoman for the Malta Tourism Authority told Times of Malta.

The airline, Germany’s second largest, filed for insolvency after key shareholder Etihad Airways withdrew funding following years of losses.

According to the MTA spokeswoman, flights to Malta operated by the airline’s Austrian subsidiary, Niki, would not be impacted by the insolvency filing.

Niki operates a number of weekly flights to Malta from Cologne, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, Germany.

READ: Air Berlin files for bankruptcy

Reuters reported that Niki’s 850 employees were braced for a bumpy ride as its parent company, Air Berlin, began talks on Friday to sell off its assets before it ran out of cash.

German flagship carrier Lufthansa was scheduled to be the first at the table ahead of other potential bidders, a senior labour union official told Reuters on Thursday amid reports that it was interested in taking over Niki.

The subsidiary’s employees were braced for a bumpy ride as
Air Berlin began talks to sell its assets before
it ran out of cash

However, Niki labour bosses said on Friday that the brand’s future was unclear and it was not known whether it would be sold separately or as part of a package.

According to the head of Austria’s com-petition watchdog, one condition for Lufthansa buying Niki could be that the merged entity is banned from servicing certain routes where Lufthansa already dominates. None of Niki’s operations in Malta overlap with Lufthansa’s.

Berlin has granted a bridging loan of €150 million to allow Air Berlin to keep its planes in the air for three months and secure the jobs of its 7,200 workers in Germany while negotiations continue.

The government said it expected decisions from the negotiations in the coming weeks.

Lufthansa has already leased Air Berlin planes to provide flights by its Eurowings budget airline and has made no secret of its interest in taking on more of Air Berlin’s business, although debts and anti-trust issues are potential obstacles.

Air Berlin has made a net loss almost every year since 2008 and in 2016 reported a record deficit of €782 million.

Funding from Etihad, which bought into the airline in 2011, has helped to keep it afloat, and the Abu Dhabi-based airline provided an additional €250 million in April.

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