Air Berlin (1991) (Berlin Tegel) has been forced to cancel more than 100 of its 750 scheduled flights on Tuesday September 12, after an "exceptional high number of sickness reports of their pilots". Approximately 200 of its 1,500 pilots reported sick.

The cancellations are affecting both domestic and international flights departing Berlin Tegel and Düsseldorf.

Air Berlin's administrator, Frank Kebekus, expressed his dismay at the situation. "Today's events are endangering the entire insolvency process in self-administration," he said. "If the situation does not change in the short term, we will have to stop operations, and therefore any reconstruction efforts."

The union representing Air Berlin's pilots, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), claims to have no knowledge of the pilot outage being a concerted or collective effort.

"The VC believes that social plan negotiation through a regular transition of staff is the only way to keep as large a number of jobs as possible," VC's website states. "Therefore, the VC has advised all cockpit staff represented by it that they must fulfil their obligations under their employment contract, provided there is no acute reason for illness."

The President of VC, Ilja Schulz, has however expressed his concerns that Air Berlin is cutting so many of its longhaul routes in a bid to trim its more expensive staff before it is sold off. Schulz told RP Online that getting rid of experienced pilots at this stage would be "a scandal we cannot afford."

The cancellations have had a knock-on effect on the operations of Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) which wet-leases thirty-two Airbus aircraft from Air Berlin.

Bids to take control over the insolvent Air Berlin close on Friday.