The German aviation market is a dynamic one, dominated by European giant, Lufthansa, and its host of subsidiaries, and also featuring Europe’s third largest LCC, Air Berlin, which has, like Lufthansa, also been pursuing an acquisition strategy. The market also features an assortment of smaller LCCs, regional airlines and charter carriers. The airline market is increasingly vibrant, but it was not always so. Dominated, as it still is, by Lufthansa and its satellites, competition was severely constrained until the late 1990s, when serious competition started to arrive in the form of new airlines, delivered a new scope of life under European Union principles of open skies.