Dba

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The correct title of this article is dba. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

For other uses, see DBA.

dba Boeing 737 aircraft.

dba (dba Luftfahrtgesellschaft mbH) was a low-cost airline based in Munich, Germany until it merged with Air Berlin in March 2007. It operated scheduled domestic and international services and also operates charter flights for tour operators to Europe and North Africa. Its main base was Munich International Airport.

1 Code data
2 History
3 Destinations as of November 2006
4 Fleet
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Code data

IATA Code: DI
ICAO Code: BAG
Callsign: Speedway ^[1]

[edit] History

The airline was established in March 1992 and started operations in June 1992. It was founded when British Airways (BA) acquired a 49% stake in Delta Air, a regional airline based at Friedrichshafen, and renamed it Deutsche BA. In April 1997, after liberalisation of the European air traffic market, BA acquired the remaining shares.

Rod Eddington replaced Bob Ayling as British Airways Chief Executive in May 2000, starting major reviews of the airline's operations. First indications of a BA review of its German arm came in 2001 at which time Deutsche BA had amassed losses of over £15m. On May 3, 2002 easyJet announced that it intended to pursue a purchase of former BA subsidiary Go. easyjet followed with an announcement on May 8, 2002 that it had signed an exclusive agreement with British Airways giving it the option to purchase Deutsche BA. easyJet had until March 31 2003, or with an extension until July 3 2003, to purchase the airline. During this time Deutsche BA would remain fully under BA control. However, easyJet had several commitments: send three managers to the German operation, contribute £3m for capital expenditure and pay BA £366,000 per month until it exercised its option. In March 2003 easyJet announced it had abandoned its plans to acquire Deutsche BA, citing the economic climate and employment laws in Germany.

In June 2003 BA announced plans to sell Deutsche BA to Intro Verwaltungsgesellschaft for a token sum of 1 Euro. In addition BA would invest £25m into the airline and guarantee its fleet of 16 Boeing 737s for a year. In return BA would receive 25% of any profits or proceeds from a sale until June 2006. It was rebranded as dba.

In March 2005 dba announced its intention to acquire rival airline Germania Express (gexx) which would create Germany's third largest airline after Lufthansa and Air Berlin. The gexx brand is in the process of being phased out on the former airline's services, along with its Fokker F100 aircraft which dba has assumed the lease of.

dba submitted a binding bid for ailing Greek national airline Olympic Airlines in April 2005, but later withdrew that bid.

In the fiscal year ending 31st March 2005, dba announced its first profit since creation in 1992, of 'between €1m and €2m [1]' on sales of around €265m. 3 million passengers flew on dba aircraft in the year ending March 2005. The airline is owned by Intro Verwaltungsgesellschaft (80%) and Martin Gauss and Peter Wojahn (20%), and has 660 employees (at January 2005).

Dba strives for the number one position in the German point-to-point business. The fleet will therefore be enlarged with 40 new Boeings by 2010 in what amounts to an order value of more than 2 billion USD as announced in November 2005. At the same time 500 new jobs will be created. The dba workforce will then count about 1200 employees.

On February 17th 2006, dba announced the purchase of 60% of LTU. Hans-Rudolf Wöhrl, the majority owner of dba, is currently planning to link the operations of LTU and dba, with dba flying inside Germany and LTU serving international destinations. It will allow LTU to increase its longhaul services by providing feeder services to Munich & Düsseldorf . LTU managing director Jurgen Marbach has taken a 24% stake in the carrier.

On August 17th 2006 it was announced that Air Berlin had acquired 100% of the shares in dba (subject to regulatory approval). dba is to continue to operate as an independent company but in future will be marketed as Air Berlin ("powered by dba"). The winter 2006 flight schedules will be harmonised and a joint schedule will be in place for the summer 2007 season.

On Wednesday 6th September 2006 the German Federal Cartel Office cleared the acquisition of 100 per cent of the shares of dba Luftfahrtgesellschaft mbH Munich by Air Berlin PLC without restrictions, so that the takeover can now be finalized. [2]