Air Berlin is a pretty good name for an airline. Berlin is a hip place. The capital of modern and prosperous Germany. And German goods and services have a good reputation.

“Air Berlin” … sounds like it may be cutting edge, and certainly well-run.

Well, no. It is not. Air Berlin is just this side of awful.

That certainly was my impression after two flights in a week, nonstops to/from Abu Dhabi and Phuket.

To sum up: It reminded me of flying an American carrier inside the U.S.

Yeah.

Let’s just go with a list of Air Berlin failings.

1. No room. The seats in coach were as tight as any I have encountered anywhere. Unless you are shorter than 5-foot-6 and weigh less than 100 pounds, you will never be comfortable sitting in coach, in Air Berlin, if the Airbus 320-200 jumbo is any indication.

2. Charging for aisle seats. This is a vile concept. If you don’t pay (in this case, 16 euros each, about $20) for an aisle or window seat you will end up in the central seats of a 2-4-2 layout. And given the lack of space (see above), you will be miserable.

3. Impenetrable rules for reserving a seat. Air Berlin did not allow us to choose a seat at the time of purchase. Their website instructed us to call 30 hours before the flight left. For the first leg, they said seats could not be reserved, in Abu Dhabi — presumably because that was the continuation of a flight from Germany. But on the way back, they said 30 hours (as noted on their website) was too late to get seats, and our only way out was to pay them another $40 to get a window/aisle — and we did it because we couldn’t stand the idea of seven hours in the middle seats.

3. Awful food. Remember when airline food really was terrible? When comedians made jokes about it? This is 30-40 years ago, before airlines and chefs were clever enough to come up with meals that could be reheated and not show it.

4. Not enough food. A seven-hour flight from Phuket to Abu Dhabi left at 8:25 p.m., which means no one ate dinner before they got to the airport. We were served something half-burned and stale two hours in, and that was it. Not even a snack. Not even a crust of bread.

5. Rude flight attendants. It was like being on American. Lots of older flight attendants, the often crabby, surly sort. Impatient, unfriendly, non-helpful. And that doesn’t wear well on Germans, at least to the English speakers ear.

Here is the nub of the problem: Air Berlin is a budget carrier that flies long-haul routes. (Well, six or seven hours is long-haul by my definition.) And that is just plain ugly.

It would be easier to bear if AB were remarkably cheap, but it was not. We took it because it was a nonstop and we were unprepared for the notion of Germans running a bad airline.

We now know they do. We were surprised.

Now that we know … we would consider not taking a trip (at all) rather than get back on an Air Berlin flight of six hours or more.