Germania (airline)

Germania

IATA ST ICAO GMI Callsign GERMANIA
Founded	1978
Focus cities	Bremen Düsseldorf Erfurt-Weimar
Fleet size	18 (+5 orders)
Destinations	30+
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Key people	Andreas Wobig (CEO)
Website	flygermania.de

Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH, operating as Germania, is a privately owned German airline with its headquarters in Berlin.^[1] Germania operates scheduled and chartered flights and aircraft lease services. The airline carried 2.5 million passengers in 2009 and has around 600 employees (at January 2010).^[2]

From its bases scheduled flights to Turkey, Kosovo, Syria, and Lebanon are offered, servicing ethnic minorities living in Germany.

History

Germania logo used until 2009.

The airline was founded in April 1978 as Special Air Transport (SAT) in Cologne and started operations on 5 September 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.

The head office of Germania in Charlottenburg-Nord, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Berlin. (2009)

In spring 1986, the company was re-organised and its name was changed to Germania on 1 June 1986.^[3] For many years, Germania's main area of doing business were charter services for TUI, Condor 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 March 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 November 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 name out of Berlin and Düsseldorf beginning with the 2008 summer schedule. However, in the light of the financial crisis, plans for a further network extension were temporarily postponed.^{[citation needed]}

The foundations were laid for the first maintenance hangar at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) on 21 March 2011. Germania plans to use the hangar together with Air Berlin once the airport becomes operational.^[4]

Corporate affairs

Ownership and related companies

Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH is a private company that had been founded and run for many years by Hinrich Bischoff, who died on 11 November 2005. His wife Ingrid Bischoff is now the main shareholder. Germania has its headquarters at Riedemannweg 58, Berlin, Germany.^[5][6]

Germania Technik Brandenburg GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Germania, based at Schönefeld.

In October 2011 it was reported that Bischoff had taken over Germania's charter partner Flynext (in full, Flynext Luftverkehrs GmbH) from the Nuremberg-based regional airline entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl, Flynext having been set up earlier that year and operating two Airbus A319s on a wet-lease basis for Germania. Now called 'Germania express' (Germania Express Fluggesellschaft mbH), the new company took over the two Airbus A319s.

Germania express in turn is the main shareholder of Gambia Bird, a new airline based at Banjul, The Gambia.^[7]

Business trends

Because it is a private company, annual reports for Germania are not published. In the absence of these, information that is available is shown below:

A Germania Airbus A319 in the current livery(2011)

Destinations

Fleet

Current fleet

A Germania Airbus A319 (2011)

A Germania Fokker 100 landing (2005).
Germania operated Fokker 100 aircraft between 2003 and 2008.

As of Januari 2014, the Germania fleet consists of the following aircraft:^[13]

Historic fleet

Over the years, Germania has operated the following aircraft types:^[14]

References

This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Germania (airline).

• Official website

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