Interflug

Interflug

IATA IF ICAO IFL Callsign Interflug
Founded	1958
Ceased operations	1991
Hubs	Berlin Schönefeld Airport
Fleet size	40 (1989)
Destinations	51 (1989)
Headquarters	Berlin Schönefeld Airport Schönefeld, East Germany

An Interflug Ilyushin Il-14

An Interflug Ilyushin Il-18

An Interflug Ilyushin Il-62 seen in 1988.

Sketch of the Baade 152 as it would have appeared in service with Interflug

An Interflug Airbus A310 seen in 1990. The A310 was the only Western-built aircraft operated by Interflug.

Interflug (Interflug GmbH, Gesellschaft für Internationalen Flugverkehr mbH) was the state airline of East Germany from 1963 to 1991, when it ceased operations following German reunification. Originally, the East German national airline was called Deutsche Lufthansa (officially Deutsche Lufthansa GmbH der DDR), but this met opposition from West Germany, with a court case in Bern awarding the Lufthansa trademark to the West German company. The head office was located in Berlin Schönefeld Airport in Schönefeld, Brandenburg, near East Berlin.

History

Interflug (shortened form of Internationaler Flug, "international flight") was founded in 1958 as a second East German airline to operate charter flights, so in 1963 when the Lufthansa name was lost, Interflug provided its identity for East Germany's "new" flag carrier.

Interflug was based at Schönefeld airport near East Berlin, and for most of its existence (1963–1989) used exclusively Soviet aircraft. This was due partly to the demise of the domestically-designed Baade B-152, which was the first German-designed jet-airliner (in either East or West Germany). However, the Baade B-152 was only ever built in prototype form (the first example of which crashed during testing) and the project was cancelled in 1961. Planes in service with Interflug between 1963 and 1991 included the prop-driven Ilyushin Il-18 (one of the major civilian aircraft of its era, and one that is still in use today), the Ilyushin Il-62 (the first long-range jet airliner to be put into service by a number of countries including East Germany) and the Tupolev Tu-134 medium-range jet. Interflug claimed to have been the largest non-Russian user of the Il-62 with 24 examples owned by the airline (the first was delivered in April 1970) including 6 Il-62s, 16 Il-62Ms and 2 Il-62MKs, with 21 of the planes for civilian use and 3 for airforce use (in fact other airlines did operate greater numbers of the Il-62 if they included leased examples in their totals). The Il-62 featured prominently in Interflug's promotional material throughout the 1970s and '80s. Interflug was a major operator of the Tu-134 with no fewer than 39 examples of this ubiquitous Russian jet (the first being delivered in July 1968) with which it developed an extensive network of routes to Europe, the USSR, the Middle East and North Africa. A number of Tu-134s were also used for government service.

In June 1989 Interflug introduced the first Western-built aircraft in the form of three Airbus A310s as its director at the time, Dr. Klaus Henkes, successfully appealed to the then leader of the GDR, SED General Secretary Erich Honecker, to purchase Western aircraft in order to position Interflug as a modern airline [1]. This proved to be difficult for a Communist state due to a lack of hard currency on their part, and the deal went through after Franz Josef Strauß, the then minister-president of the state of Bavaria in the then West Germany and a founding member of Airbus Industrie, helped negotiate the purchase with West German state loans. After reunification and before its final liquidation, Interflug wet-leased one De Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft from Tyrolean Airways to cover the remainder of contractual obligations of flying to Vienna after liquidation was announced. Long-term fleet renewal plans were considered, such as purchasing Boeing 767 for long-haul routes and Boeing 737 for European routes, for which feasibility studies were made while the GDR was still a Soviet satellite state [2], but the airline was liquidated before anything concrete materialized.

Interflug operated mainly in Europe, particularly Eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc, although it also operated flights to Cuba, Beijing in the People's Republic of China, some countries in Africa aligned with the Soviet Union, Hanoi in Vietnam, Pyongyang in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and in the late 1980s, to non-Communist parts of Southeast Asia including Bangkok and Singapore, both via Dubai. Domestically, Interflug carried 250,000 passengers in 1969. However, increasing traffic on the GDR's national railway, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, led to a noticeable decrease in passenger numbers. By 1971, the airline was flying between five East German cities, having discontinued all flights to Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz). The airline was also responsible for the running of the nation's airports. Following reunification, the airports in the former GDR were sold off separately. The airline first offered regular scheduled service to West Germany in August 1989, from Leipzig to Düsseldorf, overflying Czechoslovak airspace.

For years, similar to some other Communist countries' flag carriers, Interflug had been a financial liability for the GDR government, constantly running deep into debt. This was due in part to operating 1960s era aircraft, running the airline within the rigid constraints of a planned economy, and bureaucratic interference in daily operations. The fatal blow to the airline came in the form of disappearance of its sponsor, the GDR government, following German reunification. In March 1990 when reunification was still not at all certain, the then still-West German flag carrier Lufthansa agreed to take a 26 percent stake in Interflug with the aim of an eventual merger Reunification proceeded rapidly and the newly reunified Germany's Federal Cartel Office rejected this proposal on the grounds of creating a monopoly in the aviation sector after the European Commission raised concerns of open market access [3]. The German government agency originally hoped Interflug would stand on its own and become a second flag carrier to compete with Lufthansa as part of the liberalisation of the intra European Community aviation industry that occurred at the same time as German reunification. British Airways, which enjoyed the privilege of one of the Allied countries' airlines operating from West Berlin to the cities in West Germany when Germany was divided, submitted a bid to acquire Interflug to continue having a foothold in Germany after reunification [4][5]. The Lufthansa deal fell through but government's hopes did not materialize as British Airways sought shares in Delta Air Lines instead. Similarly, other airlines showed lukewarm interests in gaining a foothold in Germany's aviation sector by propping up the money-losing Interflug.

In March 1991, Interflug was liquidated by the government and Lufthansa was selected as the agent for liquidation. Its 32 aircraft were sold for US$192.3 million. The bulk of its Tu-134 jets were bought by Russia, with 17 going to the Aeroflot division that later became Komi Avia. Others went to Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines and 12 were acquired by Vietnam Airlines and used for domestic and regional flights until 1997. The airforce Il-62s (11+20, 11+21, 11+22) were acquired by the united German airforce and sold some years later. Interflug's trio of Airbus A310 aircraft were acquired by the Federal Government of Germany for use as VIP transports. A number of former Interflug employees gained employment at Lufthansa and its subsidiary companies, including Condor and Lufthansa Technik, while employees in the airport operations divisions became employees of the new respective municipal-owned airport corporations, but many others became unemployed.^{[citation needed]}

Although Interflug itself did not survive German unification, some of its Soviet era planes were later preserved, with original liveries, in open air collections that have become popular public attractions. The most famous is the Il-62 registered DDR-SEG that was intentionally landed on a 900m grass strip of the Stölln/Rhinow hilltop in an extremely risky manoeuvre on 23 October 1989 to commemorate the fatal crash of Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) at Gollenberg Hill. Nicknamed Lady Agnes (after Lilienthal's wife), DDR-SEG is now a museum and popular wedding registry.

External links

• Interflug - Airliners.net
• Airline Timetable Images
• "COMPANY NEWS; East German Airline Closed," The New York Times
• (German) DDR-Interflug.de
• (German) Interflieger.de
• (German) Interflug.biz