dba (airline)

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dba
Logo of the dba
Boeing 737-300 of dba
IATA code : DI
ICAO code : BAG
Call sign : SPEEDWAY
Founding: 1992
Operation stopped: 2008
Merged with: air Berlin
Seat: Munich , Germany
GermanyGermany 
Home airport : Munich Airport
Company form: GmbH
Fleet size: 22nd
Aims: national and continental
dba merged with Air Berlin in 2008 . The information in italics relates to the last status before the takeover.

dba (officially dba Luftfahrtgesellschaft mbH , previously Deutsche BA , originally Delta Air ) was a German airline based in Munich and based at Munich Airport . It operated at times as a low-cost airline and was most recently a subsidiary of Air Berlin , after British Airways ( BA ) had previously been a shareholder.

history

Delta Air

A Dornier 228-201 from Delta Air, Stuttgart 1993
A Saab 340 from Delta Air, Basel 1987

Delta Air was founded in Stuttgart in April 1977 as a taxi company by flight operations manager Brigitte Höck on behalf of the Stuttgart entrepreneur Alfred Schopp, the first aircraft was a Piper PA-31T Cheyenne I , aircraft registration D-IASG. As of April 1978, the airline took over the "air transport on demand with fixed departure times" from Friedrichshafen to Stuttgart and Zurich from " Pleuger Flugdienst ". The line was flown with a DHC-6 Twin Otter , a Fairchild Metroliner III was added in 1982 and 1988 . The taxi flight division was expanded with Piper Cheyenne and Beechcraft King Air 200 , but was later discontinued. In 1982 Delta Air entered into a cooperation with Crossair . In 1984, Dornier's works traffic between Friedrichshafen and Oberpfaffenhofen was operated with a Do 228 . In 1985 Delta Air was converted into a GmbH with the shareholders Friedrich von Bohlen and Halbach (59%) and Crossair (40%).

In 1987 Delta Air received the right to operate scheduled flights, and in 1988 a cooperation with Lufthansa followed . More and more airports in Germany were flown to from Friedrichshafen, for example Bremen , Frankfurt am Main , Cologne / Bonn and Berlin-Tempelhof . The aircraft used were machines of the Saab 340 type .

German BA

A Boeing 737-300 of the German BA

In 1992 British Airways took over 49% of the shares in Delta Air after negotiations about a cooperation with Germania and Aero Lloyd had failed. Since a German majority of capital was required to operate domestic flights, Commerzbank (19%), Bayerische Vereinsbank and Berliner Bank (each 16%) held further shares. On May 5th, the airline was renamed Deutsche BA Luftfahrtgesellschaft mbh . The British airline tried to enter the German market and at the same time to strengthen its international scheduled flights from London with a feeder service from all German airports . The first Boeing 737-300s were added in the same year . Within Germany, the Berlin flights were operated for British Airways. In 1993 the German BA took over charter flights for German tour operators to Greece , Spain , Ireland and Turkey .

In 1994 the company relocated the headquarters and the Jettechnik to the new Munich airport. In 1998 the fleet was unified and only Boeing 737-300s were used. In addition, the design of the aircraft has been adapted to that of the British Airways fleet. For the second time in a row, Deutsche BA was voted the cheapest and most punctual airline and the airline with the best service by readers of Capital magazine .

In the course of liberalization in European airspace, Bayerische Vereinsbank sold their shares in 1997 and Commerzbank and Berliner Bank in 1998 to the holding company controlled by British Airways.

At the beginning of the new financial year 2002, the Deutsche BA tried, among other things, to position itself as a low-cost airline with the abolition of the frequent flyer program and competitive prices on individual routes . At the same time, easyJet acquired a purchase option that was valid until mid-2003.

dba

A Boeing 737-300 of the dba with a special livery for the soccer world championship 2006

On June 2, 2003, British Airways sold its shares for one euro to Intro Verwaltungs GmbH owned by textile entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl . The original goal of creating an intensive feeder service for the international routes from London and achieving more profitable scheduled services as a competitor to Lufthansa had not been achieved. In April 2004 the dba got new managing directors with Martin Gauss and Peter Wojahn, as Wöhrl switched to the supervisory board . With Wöhrl as owner, the airline was in the black for the first time in its business year 2004/2005.

From March 28 to July 1, 2005, the competitor gexx (for Germania Express , today Germania again ) took a 64 percent stake in dba. During this period, twelve Fokker 100 and 15 gexx routes were wet leased (aircraft, pilots, flight attendants, technicians) to dba. This made dba the third largest German scheduled airline with 27 aircraft and up to 180 daily flights.

In February 2006 dba doubled its equity to 20 million euros. Hans Rudolf Wöhrl was now the main owner with 59.9 percent through Intro Verwaltungs GmbH, which he owned, while Lutz Helmig (founder of Helios-Kliniken ) acquired 25.1 percent of the shares through his Aton GmbH . The two dba managing directors Martin Gauss (magau GmbH) and Peter Wojahn (PIWOH GmbH) each had a 7.5 percent stake in the company.

On February 17, 2006, Wöhrl announced the acquisition of 60 percent of the shares in LTU . According to Wöhrl's plans, both airlines should cooperate closely on the route network - dba should serve the national, LTU the international destinations.

Takeover by Air Berlin

A Boeing 737-300 of the dba in the livery of Air Berlin
The tradition of heart chocolate was continued after the takeover by Air Berlin: Air Berlin Lindt.jpg

As Hans Rudolf Wöhrl, majority owner of dba owner Intro Verwaltungs GmbH announced on August 17, 2006, he sold dba to the rival Air Berlin from Joachim Hunold . The purchase price was, depending on the source, (net) “a mid double-digit million amount” ( FAZ ) or 120 million euros. The purchase price was paid in cash from Air Berlin. Together, both airlines had a passenger volume of 20 million passengers at that time. The dba company was initially to remain under the leadership of dba managing directors Martin Gauss and Peter Wojahn. The flight schedules of the two companies were coordinated with the 2007 summer flight schedule.

From April 2007, the dba brand disappeared from the outside world, at which time the company only operated flights in the name and branding of Air Berlin. In 2008 it became known that the administration of dba would be dissolved as part of Air Berlin's cost-cutting measures. Finally, dba was originally supposed to cease flight operations completely on November 30, 2008, but Air Berlin withdrew all flight orders on November 14 after a strike by the flight attendants.

Destinations

The dba mainly served domestic German routes and the airports Hamburg , Hanover , Berlin , Düsseldorf , Cologne / Bonn , Leipzig / Halle , Dresden , Stuttgart , Munich , Münster / Osnabrück , Bremen , Karlsruhe / Baden-Baden , Nuremberg , Frankfurt am Main and also internationally Nice , Moscow , Thessaloniki , Pristina , Athens , Rome , Rimini and Paris-Orly .

fleet

To cease flight operations, the dba operated up to 22 Boeing 737s .

See also

literature

  • Thomas Reidl: Times are changing - the history of the Deutsche BA . Verlag Robert Gessler, Friedrichshafen 2008, ISBN 978-3-86136-116-9 .

Web links

Commons : Delta Air  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Deutsche BA  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : dba  - collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: dba  - in the news

Individual evidence

  1. a b Pact with the youngest. Der Spiegel , March 30, 1992, accessed April 23, 2010 .
  2. Flying is getting cheaper and cheaper. In: Berliner Zeitung . August 11, 1994, accessed July 10, 2015 .
  3. ^ Deutsche BA: Largest domestic competitor of Lufthansa. (No longer available online.) Stern , May 8, 2002, archived from the original on January 11, 2012 ; Retrieved April 23, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de
  4. a b Deutsche BA is struggling with falling sales. Handelsblatt , November 5, 2002, accessed on April 23, 2010 .
  5. faz.net - "Air Berlin buys competitors DBA" of August 17, 2006
  6. Focus online - "Air Berlin swallows competitors dba" from August 17, 2006
  7. IR-News airberlin.com - “Air Berlin takes over dba” from August 17, 2006 ( memento of the original from August 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ir.airberlin.com
  8. Tagesspiegel: Air Berlin starts emergency program
  9. aero.de: "Brand name dba disappears on April 1st" ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aero.de
  10. airberlin "dba becomes Air Berlin - from March 19, 2007 ( Memento from June 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  11. aero.de: "Air Berlin dissolves subsidiary dba" (October 30, 2008) ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aero.de