Birgenair

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birgenair

IATA KT	ICAO BHY	Callsign ALFA LIMA WHISKEY

Founded

1988

Ceased operations

1996

Fleet size

Headquarters

Istanbul, Turkey

Birgenair was a Turkish charter airline company established in 1988 with headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey.^[1]

History

Owned by the Turkish businessman Mehmet Birgen, Birgenair operated charter flights from Western Europe to several Turkish holiday destinations, initially with DC-8 aircraft. Later it served the Turkish-German discount travel and tourism company Öger Tours for flights from Germany to Caribbean with Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft.

Incidents and accidents

Main article: Birgenair Flight 301

On 6 February 1996 Birgenair Flight 301 was bound for Frankfurt, Germany but crashed shortly after take-off from Puerto Plata Airport in the Dominican Republic into Atlantic Ocean 26 kilometres off-shore. All 176 passengers and 13 crew members, among them 154 Germans and 9 Polish people, were killed. It was found that one of the air speed indicators of the Boeing 757-225 was not working properly, confusing the pilots about whether the plane's speed was too fast or too slow. The aircraft was leased due to a malfunction with the scheduled aircraft for that flight.

Massive negative publicity about Birgenair and other discount flight organizers in Germany following the disaster caused a sharp decline in reservations, and finally the company went into bankruptcy and closed later that same year, 1996.

Fleet

2 Boeing 737-300
3 Boeing 757-200 (1 crashed in 1996)

TC-GEN, a Birgenair 757-200 (that crashed near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic)

References

↑ 60 Flight International. 29 March-4 April 1995 World Airline Directory.

External links

Fleet data

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Birgenair.

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