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| Founded | 1978 | |||
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| Operating bases | ||||
| Fleet size | 15 | |||
| Destinations | 26 | |||
| Headquarters | Berlin, Germany | |||
| Key people | O. Markow (CEO) | |||
| Website | www.flygermania.de | |||
Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH, operating as Germania, is an airline with its headquarters in Berlin, Germany.[1] It operates scheduled and chartered flights and aircraft lease services. From its bases at Berlin Tegel Airport and Düsseldorf Airport, scheduled flights to Turkey, Kosovo, Syria, and Lebanon are offered, aiming at the ethnic minorities living in Germany.
Holiday flights to the Mediterranean on behalf of tour operators are (as of 2011) operated out of Bremen Airport, Baden Airpark, Hannover Airport and Munich Airport. Germania carried 2.5 million passengers in 2009 and has around 600 employees (at January 2010).[2]
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The airline was founded in April 1978 as Special Air Transport (SAT) in Cologne and started operations on 5 Sep 1978. with a Fokker F-27. In November 1978, a Sud Aviation Caravelle was purchased from LTU, which was replaced by two used Boeing 727-100 from Hapag-Lloyd Flug (now TUIfly). Germania Express has adopted the IATA code "ST" which was previously used by Yanda Airlines.
In spring 1986, the company was re-organised and its name was changed to Germania on 1 Jun 1986.[3] For many years, Germania's main area of doing business were charter services for TUI, Condor Flugdienst and Neckermann Reisen – an area in which Germania earned a reputation for offering the lowest prices. In 1992 the registered office was relocated to Tegel. In the same year Germania won the bid for flight services between the old and new capital of Germany (Bonn and Berlin) on behalf of the German government, establishing a short-lived Beamten-Shuttle (German for “shuttle for civil servants”). In 1998, the airline pioneered the use of aircraft for advertising in Germany (advertisers included Siemens and various tour operators). In the same year, Germania began to lease more and more planes to other airlines such as Hapag-Lloyd Express, Maersk and Delta.
In June 2003, Germania started to offer tickets directly to passengers under the brand Germania Express (gexx). Following a purchase of a 64 % stake in dba (now part of Air Berlin) on 28 Mar 2005, Germania wet-leased 12 Fokker 100 aircraft to dba. At the same time, dba took over Germania Express's 15 established low-cost routes and thus absorbed Germania's gexx brand. Germania on the other hand, with all aircraft having been leased to other airlines, no longer offered routes directly to passengers. While the partial merger between Germania and dba was already reversed in the summer of 2005, the cooperation of Germania and dba was extended to 14 Fokker 100 aircraft. Air Berlin chief, Joachim Hunold, was tasked by Germania owner, Hinrich Bischoff, to take charge of the future of the company shortly before Bischoff's death on 11 Nov 2005. However, an agreement between Bischoff and Hunold was not reached in the end as Bischoff's heirs refused to accept.
Germania relaunched scheduled flights under its own brand out of Berlin and Düsseldorf name beginning with the 2008 summer schedule. However, in the light of the financial crisis, plans for a further network extension were temporarily postponed.
The foundations were laid for the first maintenance hangar at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) on 21 March 2011. Germania will use the hangar together with Air Berlin as from June 2012.[4]
As of January 2012, the Germania fleet consists of the following aircraft with an average age of 10.8 years:[5]
| Aircraft | In Service | Orders | Passengers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbus A319-100 | 6 | 2[6] | 150[7] | |
| Boeing 737-300 | 1 | 0 | 136 | to retire November 2011 |
| Boeing 737-700 | 9 | 0 | 148 | six aircraft are operated for Air Berlin |
| Total | 16 | 2 |
Over the years, Germania operated the following aircraft types:[8]
| Aircraft | Introduced | Retired |
|---|---|---|
| Airbus A319 | 2011 | |
| Boeing 737-300 | 1987 | 2011 |
| Boeing 737-700 | 1998 | |
| Fokker 100 | 2003 | 2008 |
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