Niki (Austria) (Vienna) has announced it will deploy up to 300 staff and eight A321-200s to Düsseldorf as part of plans to develop the west German gateway into a crew base.

In a statement, the Air Berlin (1991) capacity provider said it expects the base to be online by autumn of this year. To help facilitate future operations, Niki's fleet of A321s will be serviced by airberlin technik which has hangar facilities at the airfield.

"We are delighted to announce that we will be establishing our own base at Dusseldorf," Niki’s CEO, Oliver Lackmann, said. "The major city on the river Rhine is at the heart of the Rhine-Ruhr industrial region, which makes it a significant market for NIKI with a great deal of potential. As of now, Niki is already the third-largest airline at Dusseldorf Airport."

At present, Niki operates multiple daily return flights to Palma de Mallorca, its Spanish base as well as Agadir, Alicante, Faro, Fuerteventura, Funchal, Heraklion, Ibiza, Innsbruck, Kos Hippocrates, Lanzarote, Malaga, Gran Canaria, Ponta Delgada, Rhodes, Samos, Santa Cruz de La Palma, and Tenerife Sur.