Air Berlin USA...? [Archive]

leonbrumsack

11th Dec 2003, 08:05

Was just browsing through Airliners.net, when I stumbled across a B737 in Air Berlin USA titles. I was just wondering if anybody could tell me what Air Berlin USA was. Was it a division of Air Berlin or something to do with Berlin in the 80s? Not really important, but I am just a bit curious now!

MTIA!

Leon

WHBM

11th Dec 2003, 16:20

Air Berlin was originally an America company set up to operate out of Berlin. For those who don't know, from 1945 to 1991 no German airline could operate into West Berlin, and British Airways (with One-Elevens) and Pan Am (with 727s) dominated the schedules. As they avoided the rigorous checks the East German authorities put on train and car travellers, air became the principal means of access.

For holiday ITs to the Mediterranean the same applied. British IT airlines of the time, such as Dan-Air or Laker, based aircraft there (pilots had to be British/American, FAs were locals). US carriers had a lesser share as they didn't really understand the European IT market but Modern Air Transport ran from there in the 1960s-1970s, then came Air Berlin, owned in the US but I don't recall them actually operating over there. Pan Am also did a fair amount of holiday charter work; it always seemed strange to see their 737s in Palma.

All this charter work was small scale operation with just a handful of aircraft. The Berlin operators never ran out of West Germany as well.

All this ended when the Berlin Wall came down, and Air Berlin was sold to German investors who developed it into the German-wide IT and low cost carrier of today. Pan Am sold their routes to Lufthansa, while the BA routes were transformed into Deutsche BA.