I flew to Berlin with this airline in early July, and this was the return flight, having finished my German language course in Dresden.

There was a slight problem when I tried to confirm my flight, two days beforehand. Unfortunately the rather hard-hearted Air Berlin computer did not recognise my number. I tried again two hours later, and had no problem whatever.

This time it was an evening departure, and the flight was right on time. As with the outbound flight, the plane was a Fokker 100. This is a small plane, but very comfortable indeed. Air Berlin have three of these, with the rest of their fleet being 737s. I must say that when it comes to Air Berlin, I like the Fokkers.

We took off towards the west, so we didn't need to turn once airborne. Despite a full plane, the climb out seemed to be effortless. Pretty soon we were cruising at 32,000 feet, flying into beautiful evening sunshine. Talk about smooth. The flight was fab.

One of the pilots was a lady. I'm not sure whether she was the Captain or the First Officer, but she kept us very well-informed during the flight, giving lots of details in both English and German.

We made good time, and pretty soon we were starting our descent into Stansted. Beautiful touchdown, at least 15 minutes early. Unfortunately we then lost about 10 minutes, due to a gargantuan Asiana Airlines Cargo 747 hogging our parking stand (and probably a couple of others too, judging by the size of the thing).

As for Air Berlin, I think they have a bright future.