Hapag-Lloyd Flug

Hapag-Lloyd Flug GmbH (marketed as Hapagfly between 2005 and 2007) was a German leisure airline headquartered in Langenhagen, Lower Saxony that was originally founded by Hapag-Lloyd and later became a subsidiary of TUI Group.[2] It operated scheduled and charter passenger flights mainly to holiday resorts in Europe. Its successor is today's TUI fly Deutschland.

Hapag-Lloyd Flug
IATA ICAO Callsign
HF HLF HAPAG LLOYD
FoundedJuly 1972 (1972-07)
Commenced operations30 March 1973 (1973-03-30)
Ceased operations3 April 2007 (2007-04-03) (merged with Hapag-Lloyd Express to become TUI fly Deutschland)
Hubs
Fleet size32
Parent companyTUI Group
HeadquartersHannover, Germany[1]
Key peopleChristoph R. Müller
Websitehapagfly.com

History

Foundation and early years

The original HAPAG company first became involved in the aviation industry in 1910, sponsoring Zeppelin flights.

A Hapag-Lloyd Boeing 737-200 in the original orange and blue livery that lasted for almost three decades.
Hapagfly Airbus A310-300 wearing its old livery, 2004.
Hapagfly Boeing 737-800 in its last livery, 2007.

Hapag-Lloyd Flug was established in July 1972, two years after HAPAG merged with Norddeutscher Lloyd, when the Hapag-Lloyd shipping group bought a few Boeing 727s to fly its cruise passengers from Germany to the ports of call for the cruises. It began operations on 30 March 1973. With the boom of the holiday charter flight market in the 1970s, it quickly adopted charter flights to popular holiday destinations in the Mediterranean Sea area and the Canary Islands as well and soon became one of the biggest German charter airlines. Throughout the years, the airline added regular passenger flights to its schedule, as well as new airplanes, such as the Boeing 737-100 and Airbus A310 aircraft. In 1979, Bavaria Germanair, a charter air carrier operating Airbus A300B4 and British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Eleven series 400 and 500 jets, was merged into Hapag-Lloyd Flug.

In 1998, it became the first airline in the world to adopt the Boeing 737-800.

Mergers and rebrandings

Since 1997, it had been a subsidiary of TUI AG, which also includes the Hapag-Lloyd cargo container line and cruise line. When TUI released their new "big smile" logo in 2002, the Hapag-Lloyd livery that had remained unchanged for almost 30 years was completely changed to a new, light blue, white and red scheme with the new TUI logo on the tail to represent TUI's new corporate design. 2002 also saw the founding of Hapag-Lloyd Express, a low-cost airline that was to compete with the likes of Ryanair.

In November 2005, the airline changed its name to Hapagfly due to the new marketing strategy of the TUI Group. In January 2007 in a restructuring, it combined its operations with Hapag-Lloyd Express to become TUIfly,[3] for which it operated all flights, while Hapag-Lloyd Express marketed them until TUIfly got its own license.

Destinations

Hapag-Lloyd operated services mainly to European holiday resorts in the Mediterranean Sea area and on the Canary Islands. Most of them are now operated by TUIfly.

Fleet

Over the course of its life, Hapag-Lloyd Flug operated all of the following aircraft, primarily through aircraft leasing from companies such as ILFC and GECAS.[4][5] It is also the first operator of the most popular Boeing 737-800 Next Generation series that first commenced operations in 1998.

Aircraft Total Introduced Retired Notes
Airbus A300B4 9 1979 1989 Three taken from Bavaria Germanair
1 2005 2007 Leased from Lufthansa
Airbus A310-200 5 1988 2006
Airbus A310-300 8 1990 2006 One written off as Flight 3378
BAC One-Eleven 500 7 1979 1981 All taken from Bavaria Germanair
Boeing 727-100 8 1972 1984
Boeing 727-200 3 1979 1983
Boeing 737-200 6 1981 1993
Boeing 737-400 12 1989 2002
Boeing 737-500 5 1990 2004
Boeing 737-800 39 1998 2007 Launch customer

Incidents and accidents
  • On 12 July 2000, Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378, an Airbus A310 flying from Chania to Hanover, suffered fuel exhaustion caused in part by the crew's decision to continue the flight despite faulty landing gear that had partially retracted, which resulted in an emergency crash landing at Vienna Airport. The aircraft was written off, and 26 people were injured.[6] Although it was the first (and remained the only) incident in Hapag-Lloyd's history in which an aircraft was damaged and people were injured, it caused much criticism in the media. In 2004, a Hanover district court convicted Captain Wolfgang Arminger of "dangerous interference into air traffic," saying he was "endangering others' lives" mainly by failing to divert to Zagreb, and sentenced him with a six-month suspended prison sentence.[7]

See also

References
  1. "Airline Membership". IATA. Archived from the original on July 11, 2015.
  2. "Facts and Figures." Hapagfly. 1 June 2005. Retrieved on 29 May 2009.
  3. Flight International 3 April 2007
  4. "Hapag-Llyod". Aerobernie.bplaced.net. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
  5. "Hapag-Lloyd Fleet Details and History". Planespotters.net. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  6. "Aviation Safety Network summary". Flight Safety Foundation.
  7. "Pilot lands suspended prison sentence after Vienna crash". Flightglobal.com. 2004-05-18. Retrieved 2019-04-08.

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