Interflug

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Interflug
Interflug logo
Tupolev Tu-134 of Interflug
IATA code : IF
ICAO code : IFL
Call sign : INTERFLUG
Founding: 1958
Operation stopped: 1991
Seat: Schönefeld
Turnstile :

Berlin Schönefeld Airport

Fleet size: 39 (1990)
Aims: National and international
Interflug ceased operations in 1991. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

The Interflug company for international air traffic with limited liability was the state airline of the German Democratic Republic and also acted as an umbrella organization for all other commercial aviation activities of the state, for example agricultural aviation , air traffic control and the operation of airports . The company, which was founded in 1958, was dissolved in 1991 after German reunification .

history

founding

An Ilyushin Il-14 of Interflug in front of the building under construction at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport
The Ilyushin Il-14 with the registration number DM-SAB flew in the passenger service of Interflug until 1968

The state-owned airline Interflug was founded as a limited liability company on September 18, 1958 due to a looming legal defeat for the name Lufthansa .

The GDR had been operating an airline under the name Deutsche Lufthansa since May 1, 1955. Since the GDR did not have the naming rights, it was sued by Deutsche Lufthansa. Due to the foreseeable legal defeat and further restrictions, the GDR founded a second airline called Interflug. That way you were on the safe side if you lost the legal battle. In addition, the crews had to bring uniforms from Interflug for safety, which could be put on for the return flight if necessary.

The aim was primarily to carry out air transport on demand in charter flights . This created a second airline in the GDR alongside Deutsche Lufthansa of the GDR - which primarily operated regular services. The creation of this airline was justified by the political conditions prevailing at the time, above all by the political and economic conflict with the Federal Republic of Germany .

The West German Lufthansa , which in September 1954 had acquired the company logo and flag from the bankruptcy estate of the liquidated “old” Deutsche Lufthansa AG, prevented attempts by the GDR Lufthansa to become a member of international organizations. Air traffic to western countries was also becoming more and more difficult for Deutsche Lufthansa in the GDR, as overflight and landing rights were not granted or only to a limited extent. Under these circumstances, the creation of a second airline seemed to offer a way out. The Interflug was operated from the start together with the German Lufthansa of the GDR.

GDR time

In the early years, the focus was on air traffic to the Leipzig trade fair, which takes place twice a year . Since Interflug did not have its own aircraft, planes from the East German Lufthansa were used. Initially, the paintwork and lettering were changed, later the machines were only given an additional company logo .

At the beginning of the 1960s, the dispute over the use of the name “Lufthansa” between the two airlines of the same name in the Federal Republic and the GDR intensified. A trial brought by Deutsche Lufthansa AG before the Higher Economic Court of the Yugoslav - Serbian Republic in Belgrade was suspended in September 1963 after the GDR Transport Minister Erwin Kramer had proposed liquidating the GDR's Deutsche Lufthansa. Aircraft, airfields and route rights of the East German Lufthansa were transferred to Interflug, which also took over the scheduled flights and thus became the only airline in the GDR.

liquidation

Interflug logo on the tail unit of an agricultural aircraft
Inter flight to Singapore

In 1989, Interflug had 40 aircraft in the commercial flight division, but only the three leased Airbus planes could be operated economically. The route network had already reached an expansion of 122,000 kilometers in 1983, the transport performance this year was 2.3 billion passenger kilometers with 1.3 million passengers carried. This meant that Interflug was of a size comparable to that of Olympic Airways, for example . At the beginning of 1990, however, Interflug boss Klaus Henkes found that so far only half of the costs had been covered by ticket prices and that there was therefore a considerable need for subsidies.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG tried to cooperate with Interflug. A long-term merger was promised and a corresponding letter of intent was signed. To this end, Lufthansa was to take over 26 percent of Interflug's capital, as the transport ministers of both German states declared on April 30, 1990. In addition to strengthening its own position in domestic German air traffic, it was Lufthansa’s intention to be represented in good time when the Eastern European air traffic markets were opening up. On July 1, 1990, the eve of the economic and monetary union coming into force , the Lufthansa Executive Board agreed to take over 100 percent of the shares in Interflug. The first result was the transfer of long-haul routes to Lufthansa and the use of Interflug aircraft in charter for Lufthansa. However, the merger of Lufthansa and Interflug was rejected by the Federal Cartel Office on July 30, 1990 . At the beginning of July, the new boss Andreas Kramer had stated: "If nothing happens, we are threatened with bankruptcy."

In the meantime, British Airways also tried to cooperate with Interflug. The previous monopoly together with Air France and American airlines for flights to and from West Berlin threatened to cease to exist in the course of the emerging accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic, the restrictions in force before the deregulation of the European aviation market prohibited the transport of passengers on domestic German routes. Instead of joining Interflug, however, British Airways opted for the Friedrichshafen-based airline Delta Air .

Winding up the company

In November 1990 Lufthansa determined that Interflug was making a loss of 1 million DM every week, a total deficit of 200 million DM. With the decision of the trust agency on February 7, 1991, Interflug was liquidated after flight operations had been a month earlier was admitted to Israel . On April 30, 1991 the Tu-134 with the registration D-AOBC carried out the last scheduled flight of the Interflug to Vienna. The use of a De Havilland Canada DHC-8 of the Tyrolean in wet lease in the colors of Interflug has a more episodic character.

Ex-Interflug Airbus as 10 + 22 "Theodor Heuss" in the service of flight readiness

Around 1000 former Interflug employees were taken over by Lufthansa after the liquidation, 450 of them in technology.

The Airbus A310 aircraft were returned to the lessor, who sold them to the flight readiness department of the Federal Ministry of Defense . Today, only the Airbus A310 with the former Interflug license plate DDR-ABC is used as a passenger aircraft for the transport of soldiers (today's Air Force license plates 10 + 23).

The rest of the machines were either sold or scrapped. Only the Il-18 squadron was able to continue flight operations as a new establishment under the name Berline until 1994.

The business aviation division also had to be liquidated, as the reorganization of ownership in agriculture and the dissolution of large state-owned companies meant that the requirements for both agricultural and crane flights no longer existed. Berliner Spezialflug (BSF) is currently continuing the crane flight to a much lesser extent.

Sale of the brand name "Interflug"

Around twelve years after the end of the airline, the Hamburg flight agency Atakan acquired the brand name and from then on appeared on the market as Interflug Charter System Reise- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH . On May 29, 2005, Interflug Charter System had to file for bankruptcy. As a result, around a thousand German vacationers were stuck in Antalya .

Route network

International

Interflug ticket (1974)
An Ilyushin Il-18 of Interflug takes off from Erfurt-Weimar Airport to Budapest , 1979

In the early years, the focus was on flight connections to the socialist countries. So were Moscow (with a stopover in Vilnius ), Warsaw , Prague , Budapest and Sofia as well, Belgrade and Tirana fly. Primarily the Ilyushin Il-14 were used , which were supplemented by the Ilyushin Il-18 , which started in 1960 . With the Il-18, direct flights to Moscow were also possible without a stopover.

International route network 1959
International route network 1973

Since aircraft construction in the GDR and with it the development of the first German jet airliner, the 152 developed by Brunolf Baade , was discontinued in 1961, this model was not used as originally planned. Most of the air traffic was carried by the Ilyushin Il-18 in the 1960s. In addition to destinations in the European socialist countries, destinations in the Middle East and North Africa , but also in Asia , were served.

The age of jet aircraft began for Interflug in 1968 with the introduction of the Tupolev Tu-134 , a twin-engine short and medium-haul aircraft . This type was in use until the end of Interflug and carried out the last commercial Interflug flight from Vienna to Berlin-Schönefeld . The Tu-134 served the intra-European short and medium-haul routes, but was also used for flights to the Middle East and North Africa. The Tu-134 - and many other Soviet aircraft - were characterized by the high operating costs resulting from the high fuel consumption. In the 1980s, its use was increasingly restricted due to corrosion damage that could not be economically repaired, but above all due to noise protection requirements that could not be met with this type of aircraft in western countries.

Ilyushin Il-62 at the Stölln / Rhinow airfield

With the introduction of the Ilyushin Il-62 in 1970, the use of jet aircraft began on long-haul routes. The replacement of the previously used Il-18 shortened travel times considerably and enabled economical flight operations, especially to Vietnam or Cuba . Until the introduction of the Airbus A310 , the Il-62 was Interflug's most economical model. The introduction of the Il-62 was overshadowed by the crash of the first DM-SEA delivered on August 14, 1972 during the aircraft disaster in Königs Wusterhausen , in which all 156 passengers and crew members were killed.

From the mid-1970s onwards, certain focal points emerged in the route. In addition to the lines to the socialist countries, here also to Cuba and Vietnam, primarily flight destinations in the Middle East and North Africa were served. But air traffic to Scandinavia , Austria and Belgium also developed. In addition to the low number of passengers in the GDR for political reasons, overflight restrictions over NATO countries proved to be a hindrance. The inner-German border could not be flown over in scheduled air traffic due to reservations of the western allies; exceptions were only allowed for trade fair flights in the 1980s. In addition to the other international destinations, flights to Athens were added from 1979 , which were primarily used by Greek guest workers and West Berlin tourists. Flights to the Netherlands had to make the detour via Denmark, as only the four victorious powers of the Second World War were allowed to fly over the inner-German border. Since Interflug's prices for flights to major Western European cities and tourist destinations were up to 70 percent below those of Western IATA airlines, passengers from West Berlin also used these connections. In 1981 Interflug achieved a total of 20 million marks, and twice as much was expected for 1982.

In the 1980s, rising oil prices and stricter noise protection requirements in Western European countries led to a profound corporate crisis at Interflug, whose fleet was technically completely out of date. The aviation industry of the Soviet Union was not able to supply modern, reliable and economical aircraft types or at least to carry out urgently needed maintenance work on time. Due to the weather, the Il-62 could not always make a non-stop flight to Cuba. The consequence of this was that landing fees and fuel costs had to be paid in foreign currency for the necessary stopover in Gander in Newfoundland, Canada , and passengers occasionally decided to flee the GDR instead of a onward flight to Cuba. Interflug was offered the Il-86 , but it was not bought because this type of aircraft was already uneconomical at the time of availability and, above all, the range was less than half of the Il-62. In addition, with the Il-96, a successor had already been announced for the end of the 1980s, which should have twice the range. This type was also not bought before Interflug was completed, but there are color drawings of the Il-96 and the Tu-204 in Interflug painting.

During this phase, the Airbus group offered the delivery of the Airbus A310 through the mediation of its chairman of the supervisory board, Franz Josef Strauss and with the involvement of a western bank consortium . This was made possible because civil aircraft were removed from the CoCom list, which sanctioned Western technology exports. Previously, the Polish LOT had already acquired two Boeing 767s , so it was also about placing Airbus in the markets of other socialist countries. The Airbus aircraft modified in accordance with Interflug's requirements were handed over to Interflug in 1989. The training of the crews in France and West Germany was also part of the contract . As part of the export requirements, maintenance had to be carried out in the west; the order went to Lufthansa Technik . With the Airbus A310-304 model, Interflug had a modern aircraft at its disposal that was much more economical to operate, had considerably better performance values ​​and significantly increased comfort for the passengers.

A special feature of the Interflug connections was the use of Antonov An-26 of the National People's Army in scheduled flights to Lviv . The flights served to exchange the personnel deployed in the construction of the "Friendship Natural Gas Route" .

Inner German

An Ilyushin Il-62 M of Interflug at Hannover-Langenhagen Airport , 1990

From 1973 Interflug carried out charter flights to the Leipzig Trade Fair via Czechoslovakia. There were also occasional charter flights for other reasons, e.g. B. for the soccer world championship 1974 . An Interflug line connection between Leipzig and Düsseldorf agreed with Lufthansa in 1986 initially failed because of the US veto. The connection and thus the first regular flight operation of Interflug to a destination in the Federal Republic of Germany was started on August 11, 1989: The machine took off in Leipzig and flew over the territory of Czechoslovakia in 90 minutes to Düsseldorf, where it was received by the West German press . Interflug was to operate this line twice a week until October 30, 1989 - alternating with Lufthansa, which started its flight operations with the GDR on August 10, 1989. Here, too, the machines were not allowed to fly over the inner-German border and had to take the detour via the ČSSR.

Within the GDR

Flight routes (with flight duration) in the GDR 1965
Air routes in the GDR 1959
Air routes in the GDR 1971

The route network taken over by the Deutsche Lufthansa of the GDR , like the air taxi service, initially continued to operate unchanged. Barth (only summer air traffic ), Berlin-Schönefeld, Dresden , Leipzig and Erfurt were flown to with Ilyushin Il-14 , Karl-Marx-Stadt with Antonow An-2 .

In the fall of 1962, the scheduled service to Karl-Marx-Stadt was discontinued because the airport was not considered expandable. The airport site was built over in the mid-1970s with section II of the Fritz Heckert residential area . With the arrival of the Antonov An-24 from 1967, the inland routes were converted to this pattern. Heringsdorf Airport was now also served in summer air traffic. At first, domestic air traffic developed quite satisfactorily, and in 1969 over 250,000 passengers were carried. But the mass motorization, which was also slowly beginning to take hold in the GDR, and the introduction of the city ​​express service of the Deutsche Reichsbahn soon led to a noticeable decline in passenger numbers. In addition, the Antonov An-24 could not be operated economically. This finally led to the discontinuation of domestic air traffic in 1980 after the Ilyushin Il-18 was used for a short time. The airports in Erfurt, Leipzig and Dresden continued to be used for international scheduled traffic, and Heringsdorf for charter flights to and from Prague until 1981. After that, there was no longer any civil flight operations at Heringsdorf Airport, but it was kept on standby. The employees were trained in the construction of box trucks, warehouse equipment, aircraft tow bars and the like. busy.

Charter

In addition to the scheduled air traffic, Interflug constantly operated charter flights. Interflug arranged extensive charter flight services with tour operators from West Berlin every year. In the summer months, some of the main holiday destinations of GDR citizens on the Black Sea were also served. Frequent charter missions served the exchange of ship crews of the VEB Fischfang Rostock. After the introduction of the Let L-410 , attempts were made to offer this model as a business jet to wealthy western customers. So-called "solidarity flights" of Interflug were also handled as charter flights. During aid missions in Ethiopia and Mozambique , NVA transport aircraft of the Antonov An-26 type flew with civil registration and under Interflug flight numbers . Equipped with seat cushions and carpets, these machines flew for the Interflug from Berlin-Schönefeld to Lemberg and Kiev to build the Druzhba natural gas route . Due to the high level of noise pollution, they were also known by the nickname “line bombers”.

Transport services

The following table shows the development of transport services.

1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983
Passengers in thousands 12.5 69.3 153.5 180.9 256.4 212.6 301.8 328.5 357.3 418.8 518.9 649.3 719.1 809.5 841.6 923.4 925.9 911.7 1032.2 1139.3 1087.8 1204.3 1223.4 1242.6 1216.3 1243.6 1286.7 1358.7
Passengers after millions of kilometers 11.3 40.1 73.6 96.0 164.7 158.5 298.7 306.0 311.5 373.0 484.3 606.1 730.1 842.7 947.4 1073.1 1098.5 1119.6 1314.8 1489.8 1448.1 1585.6 1801.9 1847.7 2053.1 2129.7 2296.2 2307.1
Goods in tons 461 4567 10,392 11,736 14,503 15,773 15,878 17,342 19,245 19,049 19,799 24,493 25.054 26,452 27,150 28,758 27,671 26,466 27,975 28,896
Goods in millions of kilometers 480 4655 13,060 15,797 21,773 24,090 23,319 26,647 29,719 29,229 30,757 52,586 50,459 67,800 62,334 67,345 67.271 65,514 72,617 72,120

Aviation areas

Use of helicopters to electrify railway lines in 1981

Interflug was also active in the field of industrial and visual flight. Specially equipped aircraft, initially Antonov An-2 and Ilyushin Il-14, later Let-410, were used for surveying and documentation tasks. Both aerial photographs in different spectra and geophysical measurements to search for magnetic field anomalies were carried out.

The crane flight area was of particular importance. The use of helicopters for assembly work in otherwise difficult-to-access areas, including inner-city areas, was practiced on a large scale. Above all, the use of helicopters for the electrification of the route of the Deutsche Reichsbahn became known, mostly during ongoing operations.

A separate part of Interflug was created for the industrial and visual flight sector. The economic structures in the GDR, especially the size of the farms in agriculture and industry, and the tight central management favored the development of this part of Interflug. Other areas, such as rescue aviation, were not covered by Interflug.

For the air traffic control of the GDR the main department "Civil Aviation" was founded in 1957, in 1961 the department "Civil Air Traffic Control". In 1962 an air traffic control center ( Area Control Center , ACC) was set up in Schönefeld; 1969 an ACC in Cottbus for the southern part of the GDR. The northern part was monitored by the "Friedland ACC", which was located in the NVA property in Cölpin . With the restoration of German unity, in 1990 the Federal Agency for Air Traffic Control , which was renamed Deutsche Flugsicherung after privatization in 1993 , took over the air traffic control services of Interflug.

fleet

The following table shows the development of the commercial aircraft fleet.

Type 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
Ilyushin Il-14 5 12 21st 21st 24 27 26th 26th 25th 21st 10 4th 4th
Aero Ae-45 1 4th 5 6th 3 1
Antonov An-2 6th 11 13 8th 8th 7th
Ilyushin Il-18 3 3 5 6th 7th 9 9 12 12 13 13 13 13 15th 15th 15th 15th 15th 14th 14th 14th 14th 13 13 13 13 12 8th 8th 7th
Antonov An-24 5 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 5
Tupolev Tu-134 4th 4th 4th 4th 5 11 11 13 13 17th 18th 19th 19th 21st 23 23 21st 17th 17th 18th 18th 19th
Ilyushin Il-62 2 3 2 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6th 7th 7th 8th 9 11 11 13 13 11 9
Let

L-410

3 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th 6th
Airbus A310 3 3
DHC-8 1
total 5 13 31 40 46 41 38 38 30th 27 17th 18th 19th 18th 22nd 25th 26th 25th 29 37 36 33 33 37 37 39 40 45 50 50 50 47 48 45 46 45

The Let L-410, which has been in use since 1982, could be used as a light transport aircraft or as a regional airliner for up to six passengers. It was not used in regular services.

Agricultural flight

development

The use of airplanes in agriculture and forestry was already practiced regularly in Germany before the Second World War . The agricultural production cooperatives (LPG) that arose as a result of the “socialist transformation” of agriculture favored the use of agricultural aircraft due to their large areas .

From March 1957, the Czechoslovakian L-60 Brigadyr , a further development of the Fieseler Storch , was the first agricultural aircraft in the GDR to be used by the "Lufthansa Commercial Aviation Department ", which became part of Interflug's "Agricultural Flight Operations Department " in 1963. A year earlier, spray tests had already been carried out with a Mráz K-65 from the Czechoslovakian Agrolet . The use of the L-60 was overshadowed by several serious accidents. Of the 65 aircraft used, 30 had to be written off due to flight accidents during the ten-year period. It was only with the introduction of the Z-37 Čmelák , which was specially developed for agricultural flight and also from Czechoslovakia, in 1967, that agricultural aircraft were used on a large scale. The agrochemical centers were created , which carried out the concentrated use of agricultural aviation for pest control, fertilization and sowing and each had several operational airfields. In 1967, a flight school tailored to the special requirements of agricultural flight was founded at Leipzig-Mockau Airport , which was renamed the "Arthur Pieck" company academy in 1977. Until it was closed in 1990, over 400 agricultural pilots - including some from friendly countries such as B. Vietnam - and trained around 600 mechanics.

The replacement of the Z-37 by Polish PZL-106 and PZL M18 Dromader aircraft turned out to be problematic due to structural inadequacies and sometimes considerable manufacturing defects, so that the Z-37 had to be operated longer than originally planned.

In the 1970s, the use of agricultural aircraft to fight forest fires was initially tested and successfully carried out from 1976, z. B. in the case of a major forest fire in the Cottbus district in 1983. During the same period, the lime fertilization of the forests in the south of the GDR , which was carried out to reduce the consequences of forest death , led to increased use of helicopters . Since the available capacities were insufficient, flying equipment from the Soviet Union, but also from Bulgaria and Poland was chartered here.

The skills developed by Interflug (almost 100,000 flight hours) were also rated positively internationally. This is how agricultural planes from the GDR were deployed in Egypt , Bulgaria and the ČSSR. At the end of the 1980s, Interflug's agricultural flight had around 280 ready-to-use aircraft and annually worked an area between 4.2 and 5.2 million hectares.

Services

The following table shows the development of the agricultural flight services provided by Deutsche Lufthansa and Interflug.

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983
Worked
area
1000 hectares in
total
168 469 553 513 745 899 1330 1863 2131 2520 2766 3013
Worked
area
1000 hectares of
fertilization
31 233 292 275 335 352 459 717 1087 950 1101 1320
Machined
surface
1000 hectare
pest
-fighting
137 237 260 238 410 547 821 1115 1001 1570 1529 1531
Flight hours
1000 hectares in
total
71083 76777 88089 92046 97791 98282 103653 85547 91964
Flying hours
1000 hectares of
fertilization
48223 54183 60941 66468 72176 72273 74979 69013 77190
Flight hours
in 1000 hectare
pest
-fighting
22860 22594 27148 25576 26615 26009 26674 16534 14774

Airplanes of the MfS

Two Tu-134A with the aircraft registration numbers DDR-SDHand DDR-SDIthe Ministry of State Security were stationed in Schönefeld . These machines flew with Interflug license plates and livery. Officially today it is said that with the appearance as civil interflug aircraft, overflight permits were easier to get. Among other things, they were used for the repatriation of GDR citizens who had committed criminal offenses abroad. The owner of the machines was actually Interflug, which was also responsible for maintenance, repairs and technical clearance.

Both machines were operationally subordinate to the Air Force Transport Wing 44 of the NVA .

Transport Air Wing 44

Airplanes of the Air Force Transport Squadron 44 of the National People's Army in Marxwalde (today Neuhardenberg ) repeatedly caused irritation , since here, in addition to the Il-14, Il-18, Tu-134 and Il-62, planes such as the Tu-124 or Tu 154 were used, which were never in the inventory of Interflug. Transportgeschwader 44 was part of the GDR's National People's Army, i.e. a purely military unit, and its range of tasks was comparable to that of the Federal Ministry of Defense . Since problems with the granting of overflight and landing rights were to be expected in the case of exclusively military identification and registration, some of the aircraft were provided in Interflug colors and corresponding identification from the start. These aircraft did not belong to Interflug while they were in service with the TG-44, but were occasionally used in the event of capacity bottlenecks on Interflug routes. It was also common for crews of the TG-44 to fly to achieve the prescribed number of flying hours in normal operation of the Interflug.

The same applies to an Antonov An-24 and two Tupolev Tu-134, which were operated by the Stasi. The three Il-62M of the TG-44 were stationed in Marxwalde in Schönefeld because of the limited runway length.

Incidents

Until the cessation of air traffic, eight serious incidents / crashes occurred, including four fatal accidents with a total of 214 deaths:

  • On December 7, 1963, there was a complete power failure on board the Il-14 DM-SBL. The crew succeeded in a belly landing with retracted landing gear on a military training area, in which only two passengers suffered bruises. The aircraft was written off and scrapped (see also the plane crash near Königsbrück ).
  • On March 10, 1970, Christel and Eckhard Wehage tried with a pistol to kidnap an Antonow An-24, which was to fly from Berlin-Schönefeld to Leipzig, and divert it to Hanover . The pilots, who locked themselves in the cockpit, feigned a lack of fuel and stated that they were flying to Berlin-Tempelhof. In fact, the plane flew back to Berlin-Schönefeld Airport. The pilot was injured in the ear by a shot. When the kidnappers realized that they could not escape from the GDR, they committed aboard suicide .
  • August 14, 1972 - The Ilyushin Il-62 with the registration number DM-SEA of Interflug was on the flight from Berlin-Schönefeld to Burgas in Bulgaria. At an altitude of 8,700 meters, the pilot noticed a problem with the mobility of the elevator. The crew then wanted to return to Berlin. Shortly afterwards, about 30 minutes after taking off in Berlin, the machine crashed near Königs Wusterhausen . All 156 people on board died. The reason was a defective hot air line, parts of the stern caught fire. Shortly before the crash, the stern broke off, and the crew had no chance of keeping the aircraft under control (see also: Königs Wusterhausen air disaster ).
  • September 1, 1975 - The Tupolew Tu-134 DM-SCD from Stuttgart flew trade fair guests to Leipzig. On the approach to landing at Leipzig Airport, the aircraft sank inadmissibly below the decision height of 60 meters in poor visibility conditions . The aircraft collided with the Middle Locator (LM) antenna and crashed. 23 of the 29 passengers and 3 flight attendants could only be rescued dead. Another passenger later succumbed to his injuries.
    (see also Interflug flight 1107 )
  • On November 22nd, 1977 the TU-134A DM-SCM landed hard on the runway in Berlin-Schönefeld. The wings broke off, the machine overturned but did not catch fire, so that all 81 occupants got away with the horror. The machine was one of the two in which the autopilot was experimentally converted for landing approaches according to Category IIIa . During the simulated approach using this procedure, the autopilot could not be switched off. As a result, the aircraft could not be intercepted and float out .
  • Mar. 26, 1979 - The Ilyushin Il-18D DM-STL crashed shortly after taking off from Luanda Airport in Angola. A drop in power on one engine meant that the overloaded machine could not gain altitude in the high outside temperatures. It crashed into a hollow behind the runway. Several explosions and fires completely destroyed the aircraft. All ten occupants were killed (see also Luanda plane disaster ).
  • June 17, 1989 - The Ilyushin Il-62 DDR-SEW rolled over the runway when it took off in Berlin-Schönefeld, collided with obstacles and caught fire. The cause was a blocked elevator. In addition, the flight engineer accidentally switched off the engines instead of activating the thrust reverser. In the accident, 20 of the 113 inmates and one person were killed on the ground. (see also Interflug flight 102 )
  • A serious incident occurred on 11 February 1991 on the approach of the coming from Berlin Airbus A310-304ET D-AOAC the Sheremetyevo Airport : The air traffic controller instructed the crew to, durchzustarten because the landed before the Airbus aircraft runway yet had not left. During the go-around maneuver initiated at a height of almost 500 meters, the pilots intervened in the controls without switching off the autopilot beforehand . During manual steering interventions, the autopilot normally switches itself off, only in go-around mode it cannot be “pushed over”, which the pilot was not aware of. When they deactivated the autopilot a little later, it had already trimmed the aircraft up to the stop in the direction of "tail-heavy" . As a result, the aircraft with maximum thrust into a steep climb went on until 1300 meters to stall came and dumped the plane. This almost vertical rearing up and tilting was repeated three more times until the pilots recognized the extreme trimming of the horizontal stabilizer as the cause of the problem and corrected the trim. During these unintended vertical maneuvers, the Airbus A310 effectively gained height due to its high thrust-to-weight ratio . Most recently it had tipped over from a height of 3,600 meters and the pilots managed to regain control at an altitude of around 2,700 meters. In this incident, none of the occupants was injured and the aircraft was also undamaged.

Risk of pilots fleeing the republic

The pilots of Interflug were divided into three reliability categories: 1. KA: Capitalist foreign countries - 2. NSW: Non-socialist economic area - 3. SW: Socialist economic area ; The classification resulted in the routes on which a pilot was allowed to be deployed or not. If two spouses were employed by the flight staff of Interflug, care was usually taken to ensure that both were not deployed on flights to the West at the same time, in order to reduce the likelihood of an escape from the GDR . The airline and the airports themselves were monitored by the main department XIX (transport) of the Ministry for State Security, MfS. The passport control employees (main department VI) of the MfS in the clearance halls appeared, as is customary elsewhere, in the uniform of the GDR border troops and formed the separate passport control unit . They had nothing to do with the direct management of Interflug. Since the beginning of the 1970s, almost all Interflug flights have been accompanied in civilian fashion by flight safety attendants from the “Working Group of the Minister” S (area: special military-operational tasks) of the MfS. This also applied to flights to countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia , with which there was no visa ; The background for this was in particular incidents such as the plane hijacking in Gdansk , in which a scheduled flight of the Polish airline LOT from Gdansk to Berlin-Schönefeld was hijacked and the crew was forced to land in Berlin-Tempelhof in West Berlin . For the same reason, the cockpit of Interflug aircraft was kept locked and, for example, children were not allowed to see them when it was still possible with many western airlines - for example in the 1980s.

General Directors

Surname period of service comment
Arthur Pieck 1955-1960 German Lufthansa (GDR)
Kurt Heiland 1961-1970 Deutsche Lufthansa (GDR), then Interflug
Kurt Diedrich 1970-1988
Klaus Henkes 1978-1990 Lieutenant General of the NVA
Andreas Kramer 1990-1991 in the role of chief executive officer

See also

literature

  • Author community: Aviation yearbook of the GDR . Issues 1958 to 1987, Transpress-Verlag, Berlin.
  • Rudolf Braunburg : Interflug. The German airline beyond the wall . ADV-Mediendienste & Verlag, Augsburg 1992.
  • Klaus Breiler: The big book of Interflug . Das Neue, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-360-01904-2 .
  • Klaus Breiler: About flying and landing. On the history of East German aviation. Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-938543-89-4 .
  • Helmut Erfurth: The big book of the GDR aviation . GeraMond, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7654-7216-6 .
  • Klaus Henkes: 25 years of Interflug. In: Wolfgang Sellenthin (Ed.): Fliegerkalender der DDR 1980. Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1979, pp. 30–49.
  • Lothar Kempe: Air travel. VEB FA Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1963.
  • Karl-Dieter Seifert: way and crash of the Interflug . Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89488-071-6 .
  • Wolfgang Mendorf: Deutsche Airlines and their planes since 1970 , Podszun, Brilon 2016, ISBN 978-3-86133-824-6 , pp. 116–118
  • G. Pistiak: At the end of Interflug. In: FliegerRevue , No. 4/1991, p. 121

Web links

Commons : Interflug  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. n-tv NEWS: INTERFLUG founded 50 years ago. Retrieved February 24, 2019 .
  2. There was once a German Lufthansa in the GDR as well. Retrieved February 24, 2019 .
  3. a b c Heinz Michaels: Desired flying object . The time 49/1990. November 9, 1990. Retrieved January 14, 2010.
  4. Old style . The mirror 28/1990. July 9, 1990. Retrieved January 14, 2010.
  5. The story (PDF) Lufthansa Technik . October 2005. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  6. Ebner, Lutz: Summer, Columns and Sirtaki - Interflug on the anniversary course: 10 years of the Berlin-Athens airline . In Bord Journal of Interflug, Berlin 1989.
  7. a b That is a tremendous fraud . The mirror . September 6, 1982. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  8. ^ Horst Materna: The Berlin-Schönefeld Airport and the military-run Interflug 1977–1988. Verlag Rockstuhl 2015, ISBN 978-3-86777-465-9 , p. 138f, p. 144 f.
  9. a b Two Airbus jets for the GDR . The mirror. May 2, 1988. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  10. a b c Very, very high price . The mirror. June 27, 1988. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  11. ^ Rainer W. During: Lufthansa flies the first German-German scheduled flight to , tagesspiegel.de, August 10, 2014, accessed on June 18, 2017.
  12. Really absurd . The mirror. March 17, 1986. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  13. Tagesschau from August 11, 1989.
  14. ^ Horst Materna: The Berlin-Schönefeld Airport and the military-run Interflug 1977–1988. Verlag Rockstuhl 2015, ISBN 978-3-86777-465-9 , p. 229.
  15. a b Fliegerjahrbuch 1985/86, yearbook of the aerospace industry , Transpress VEB publishing house for traffic, Berlin 1986.
  16. Helmut Erfurth: The great book of GDR aviation , Geramond, Munich, 2004.
  17. Interflug aircraft types at www.if-interflug.de ( Memento from October 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 17, 2019.
  18. Claus Märten: The agricultural aviation- yesterday, today, tomorrow, Flieger-Jahrbuch 1970, S. 97/98.
  19. Detlef Billig, Jörg Mückler: Fliegende Landwirte - Agricultural flight in the GDR in Flieger Revue Extra No. 7. Möller, Berlin 2004, ISSN  0941-889X . Pp. 4-6.
  20. Detlef Billig, Jörg Mückler: Fliegende Landwirte - Agricultural flight in the GDR in Flieger Revue Extra No. 7. Möller, Berlin 2004. ISSN  0941-889X , p. 28.
  21. ^ [...] the readiness for flight of the Ministry for State Security. This initially operated with an AN-24RW (?) DM-SBH. This aircraft differed from the Interflug aircraft by the following features: KW antenna (long-wire antenna from the vertical stabilizer to the bow) and instead of one, the aircraft had two "false keels" under the horizontal stabilizer. Later the MfS used two Tu-134A, the DDR-SDH and the DDR-SDI. A few remarks about DDR-SDH / SDI: The "false colors" were less wrong than those of the TG-44. […], See at ddr-interflug.de ( Memento from March 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 17, 2019.
  22. See at airlines-airliners.de , accessed on September 3, 2008.
  23. Portrait of the Wehage couple at chronik-der-mauer.de.
  24. ^ Detlef Billig / Manfred Meyer: Airplanes of the GDR. Volume 2, TOM Modellbau, Friedland 2002, p. 131.
  25. interflug.biz with a picture of the crashed aircraft
  26. n-tv.de : The other "Deutsche Lufthansa": INTERFLUG founded 50 years ago . July 1, 2005, accessed February 6, 2016.
  27. a b Klaus Breiler: From flying and landing. On the history of East German aviation. Pp. 115, 194, 243, 247.