Berlin Tempelhof Airport - History - Postwar Commercial Use

Postwar Commercial Use

American Overseas Airlines (AOA), at the time the overseas division of American Airlines, inaugurated the first commercial air link serving Tempelhof after the war with a flight from New York via Shannon, Amsterdam and Frankfurt on 18 May 1946. This was followed by AOA's inauguration of West Berlin's first dedicated domestic air link between Tempelhof and Frankfurt's Rhein-Main Airport on 1 March 1948.

AOA had the distinction of being the only commercial operator at Tempelhof to maintain its full flying programme for the entire duration of the Berlin Blockade (26 June 1948 – 12 May 1949).

Following the end of the Berlin Blockade, AOA launched additional dedicated scheduled domestic services linking Tempelhof with Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel and Düsseldorf Lohausen from 6 March and 1 June 1950 respectively.

On 25 September 1950, Pan Am acquired AOA from American Airlines. This merger resulted in Pan Am establishing a growing presence at Tempelhof. (In addition to continuing AOA's original, multistop Berlin – New York route and dedicated internal German services connecting Berlin with Frankfurt, Hamburg and Düsseldorf, between 1955 and 1959, Pan Am commenced regular, year-round scheduled services to Cologne, Stuttgart, Hanover, Munich and Nuremberg from Tempelhof.) Pan Am's initial equipment for its new Berlin operation were unpressurised, 60-seat Douglas DC-4s as these were widely available at the time due to the large number of war-surplus C-54 Skymasters on the second-hand aircraft market.

1950 was also the year Air France joined Pan Am at Tempelhof. Air France resumed operations to Tempelhof following their cessation during the war years.

This was furthermore the time Allied restrictions on the carriage of local civilians on commercial airline services from/to West Berlin were lifted. It entailed transferring responsibility for processing all commercial flights to West Berlin's city government, including the operation and maintenance of associated passenger, cargo and mail handling facilities. These changes gave a major boost to West Berlin's fledgeling post-war scheduled air services.

On 8 July 1951, BEA transferred its operations from Gatow to Tempelhof, thus concentrating all West Berlin air services at Berlin's iconic city centre airport. BEA's move to Tempelhof resulted in a significant increase in passenger numbers, as well as an increase in its Berlin-based fleet to six Douglas DC-3s.

From then on, several of the new, wholly privately owned UK independent airlines and US supplemental carriers commenced regular air services to Tempelhof from the UK, the US and West Germany. These airlines initially carried members of the UK and US armed forces stationed in Berlin and their dependants as well as essential raw materials, finished goods manufactured in West Berlin and refugees from East Germany and Eastern Europe, who were still able to freely enter the city prior to the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, on their flights. This operation was also known as the second Little Berlin Airlift. One of these airlines, UK independent Dan-Air Services (operating as Dan-Air London), would subsequently play an important role in developing commercial air services from Tegel for a quarter century.

During the early-to-mid-1950s, BEA leased in aircraft that were bigger than its Tempelhof-based fleet of DC-3/Pionair, Viking and Elizabethan piston-engined airliners from other operators to boost capacity, following a steady increase in the airline's passenger loads. (BEA continued to augment its Berlin fleet with additional aircraft leased from other airlines on an ad hoc basis. This included an ex-Transair Vickers Viscount 700 belonging to its newly formed independent rival British United Airways, which was damaged beyond repair on 30 October 1961 in a non-fatal landing accident at Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airport at the end of a passenger flight that had originated at Tempelhof.)

By 1954, a year that saw 671,555 passengers pass through the airport, Tempelhof had established itself as the third-busiest airport in Europe. From 6 June of that year, Pan Am began re-equipping its Tempelhof-based fleet with larger, pressurised Douglas DC-6B propliners. Compared with the DC-4, the new type had 16 additional seats.

In 1958, BEA began replacing its ageing piston airliners with Vickers Viscount 701 turboprop aircraft in a high-density, 63-seat single class seating arrangement. Up to ten brand-new, state-of-the-art Vickers Viscount 802s, which featured a more spacious, 66-seat single-class seating arrangement, soon replaced the older series 701 aircraft. The greater range and higher cruising speed of the 802 series enabled BEA to inaugurate a non-stop London Heathrow – Berlin Tempelhof service on 1 November 1965. For many years, this was the only non-stop international scheduled air service from Tempelhof.

On 19 November 1959, a Pan Am DC-4 became the first aircraft to operate a scheduled all-cargo service from West Berlin. This service linked Tempelhof with Rhein-Main Airport once-nightly, all year round.

On 2 January 1960, Air France, which had served Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg and its main base at Paris Le Bourget/Orly during the previous decade with DC-4, Sud-Est Languedoc and Lockheed Constellation/Super Constellation piston-engined equipment, shifted its entire Berlin operation to Tegel because Tempelhof's runways were too short to permit the introduction of the Sud-Aviation Caravelle, the French flag carrier's new short-haul jet, with a viable payload. (Air France's Caravelle IIIs lacked thrust reversers that would have permitted them to land safely on Tempelhof's short runways with a full commercial payload.)

On 1 March 1960, Pan Am launched its second dedicated scheduled all-cargo flight from Berlin, linking Tempelhof with Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel.

1960 was also the year Pan Am withdrew its last DC-4 from Tempelhof. As a result, all of the airline's Berlin routes were exclusively served with DC-6Bs as of 27 June of that year. Although the DC-6B was a less advanced aircraft than either the Viscount or the Caravelle, it was more economical. By the early 1960s, Pan Am had a fleet of 15 DC-6Bs stationed at its Tempelhof base, which were configured in a higher-density seating arrangement than competing airlines' aircraft. (Pan Am's DC-6Bs were originally configured in a 76-seat, all-economy layout. The subsequent introduction of subsidies for all scheduled internal German services from/to West Berlin resulted in steady network growth as well as service frequency and passenger load increases. To cope with the sharply higher traffic volumes, aircraft seat densities were increased twice – initially to 84 and subsequently 87 seats.) This fleet eventually grew to 17 aircraft, which gave Pan Am the biggest aircraft fleet among the three main scheduled operators flying from West Berlin. It furthermore enabled it to compensate for the DC-6's lack of sophistication with higher frequencies than its competitors, thereby attaining a higher market share (60%) and capturing a greater share of the lucrative business travel market than its rivals. During that period, Pan Am moreover achieved an industry-leading ultra short-haul load factor of 70% on its eight scheduled internal routes from Berlin, making the airline's Berlin routes the most profitable in its worldwide scheduled network.

Following the completion of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, the West German government introduced a route-specific subsidy of up to 20% for all internal German scheduled air services from and to West Berlin to help the airlines cope with the resulting falloff in traffic and maintain an economically viable operation on these lifeline routes. These came into effect on 1 March 1962 for all tickets sold in Germany, including Berlin. (To qualify for the subsidised rate under this system, the passenger was required to purchase a round-trip ticket for a scheduled internal German flight from/to West Berlin in Germany. Once he/she had checked-in at the airport, the airline collected a coupon attached to his/her ticket, which was subsequently handed in to the relevant German authorities for reimbursement.)

By the early 1960s, a number of UK independents and US supplementals began operating regular charter flights from Tempelhof. These carried both inbound tourists from the US, the UK and other countries as well as local outbound tourists to the emerging holiday resorts in the Mediterranean. London Gatwick-based UK independent Overseas Aviation (CI) was among the first airlines the Allied Air Attachés in Bonn licensed to operate a series of regular charter flights from West Berlin. It used Vikings and Argonauts on these services, which operated from Tempelhof under contract to the Berlin Senate and the city's Technical University as well as Berliner Flugring, a local package tour operator that began as a consortium of West Berlin travel agents arranging IT flights to holiday resorts in Europe.

By 1964, BEA operated up to 20,000 flights each year from and to Berlin. These represented approximately half of the airline's total yearly flights to/from Germany and generated profits of £1 million per year. 1964 was also the year US supplemental Saturn Airways began operating a comprehensive inclusive tour (IT) charter flight programme from Tempelhof under contract to local package holiday company Flug-Union Berlin, using Douglas DC-6A/Cs and DC-7Cs. On 2 December of that year, a Boeing 727-100 became the first jet aircraft to land at Tempelhof. Boeing had leased the aircraft to Pan Am for a special flight from Frankfurt to Berlin to demonstrate to the airline the 727's ability to operate from Tempelhof's short runways. Pan Am indicated its intention to place an order for six 727s for its Berlin operation, as a result of the aircraft using only half the 5,900 ft (1,800 m) runway during landing.

26 October 1965 marked British Aircraft Corporation's new One-Eleven jet's first arrival at Tempelhof when a British United 200 series operating a trooping flight under contract to the UK Ministry of Defence diverted from Gatow.

22 January 1966 marked the first appearance of a British trijet at Tempelhof when Hawker Siddeley flew in its HS 121 Trident 1E demonstrator aircraft for evaluation by BEA. A week later, on 29 January, BEA began evaluating the BAC One-Eleven's suitability for its Berlin operations, with the start of a series of test flights conducted on its behalf by BAC's 475 series demonstrator. This included a number of takeoffs and landings at Tempelhof to test the aircraft's short-field performance.

On 18 March 1966, Pan Am became the first airline to commence regular, year-round jet operations from Tempelhof with the first examples of a brand-new fleet of an initial eight Boeing 727 100 series, one of the first jet aircraft with a short-field capability. These aircraft were configured in a single class featuring 128 economy seats.

Pan Am's move put BEA at a considerable competitive disadvantage, especially on the busy Berlin–Frankfurt route where the former out-competed the latter with both modern jet planes as well as a higher flight frequency. BEA responded to Pan Am's competitive threat by increasing the Berlin-based fleet to 13 Viscounts by winter 1966/7 to enable it to offer higher frequencies. This entailed re-configuring aircraft cabins in a lower-density seating arrangement, as a result of which the refurbished cabins featured only 53, Comet-type first-class seats in a four-abreast layout instead of 66, five-abreast economy seats. In addition, BEA sought to differentiate itself from its main competitor by providing a superior in-flight catering standard. (BEA's Silver Star service included complimentary hot meals on all flights whereas Pan Am merely offered free on-board snacks. Sections of the local press dubbed the contrasting strategies of the two main protagonists plying the internal German routes from Berlin – estimated to be worth £15-20 million in annual revenues – the Dinner oder Düsen? (Dinner or Jet?) battle.) Henceforth, the airline marketed these services as Super Silver Star.

The introduction of Pan Am's 727s to the Berlin market represented a major step change because of the aircraft's ability to carry more passengers than any other contemporary aircraft type used by scheduled carriers in the short-haul Berlin market, and its ability to take off from and land on Tempelhof's short runways with a full commercial payload as only light fuel loads were required on the short internal German services. Compared with BEA, Pan Am's 727s carried 20% more passengers than the British carrier's Comet 4Bs and up to 2½ times as many passengers as the latter's Viscounts.

Within two years of Pan Am's introduction of jet equipment on the bulk of its internal German services from/to West Berlin, its market share rose from 58% to 68%. Despite the huge increase in capacity over the DC-6B (128 vs. 87 seats), load factors dropped during the first year of operations only. (Pan Am's second year of jet operations from Tempelhof saw load factors steadying while the third saw a slight increase.) The lower seat density in BEA's re-configured Viscounts combined with higher flight frequencies, superior catering and increased promotion proved insufficient to counter the appeal of Pan Am's new jets, which were laid out in a comparatively tight, 34 in (86 cm) pitch seating configuration. This resulted in BEA's market share declining from 38% at the beginning of this period to 27% at its end. On the other hand, BEA's reduced capacity in the domestic air travel market between West Berlin and West Germany enabled it to attain higher load factors than its competitors.

From August 1968, BEA supplemented its Tempelhof-based Viscount fleet with de Havilland Comet 4B series jetliners. Although these aircraft could operate from Tempelhof's short runways without payload restrictions, they were not suited to the airline's ultra short-haul operation from Berlin (average stage length: 230 mi (370 km)) given the high fuel consumption of the Comet, especially when operating at the mandatory 10,000 ft (3,000 m) altitude inside the Allied air corridors. This measure was therefore only a stopgap until most of BEA's Berlin fleet was equipped with 97-seat, single-class BAC One-Eleven 500s. BEA's re-equipment of its Berlin fleet with brand-new One-Eleven 500 jets was central to the airline's competitive strategy to regain ground lost to Pan Am's 727s. The new One-Eleven 500, which BEA called the Super One-Eleven, operated its first scheduled service from Berlin on 1 September 1968. It began replacing the airline's Berlin-based Viscounts from 17 November 1968.

1968 was also the year all non-scheduled services, i.e. primarily the rapidly growing number of inclusive tour charter flights, were concentrated at Tegel to alleviate increasing congestion at Tempelhof and to make better use of Tegel, which was underutilised at the time.

Air France, West Berlin's third scheduled carrier, which had suffered a continuous traffic decline ever since the transfer of Berlin operations to more distant Tegel at the beginning of 1960 due to Tempelhof's operational limitations that made it unsuitable for its Caravelles, was worst affected by the equipment changes at the latter airport during the mid-to-late 1960s. Over this period, the French airline's market share halved from 9% to less than 5% despite having withdrawn from Tegel–Düsseldorf in summer 1964 and concentrated its limited resources on Tegel–Frankfurt and Tegel–Munich to maximise the competitive impact on the latter two routes. To reverse growing losses on its Berlin routes resulting from load factors as low as 30%, Air France decided to withdraw from the internal German market entirely and instead enter into a joint venture with BEA. This arrangement entailed the latter taking over the former's two remaining German domestic routes to Frankfurt and Munich and operating these with its own aircraft and flightdeck crews from Tempelhof. It also entailed repainting the fins of the BEA One-Eleven 500s in a neutral, dark-blue scheme featuring Super One-Eleven titles instead of BEA's "Speedjack" motif. The Air France-BEA joint venture became operational in spring 1969 and terminated in autumn 1972.

Commercial air traffic from/to Berlin Tempelhof peaked in 1971 at just above 5½ million passengers (out of a total of 6.12 million passengers for all West Berlin airports during that year). This represented more than 90% of West Berlin's commercial air traffic and made its iconic city centre airport Germany's second-largest. With 3½ million passengers, Pan Am accounted for the bulk of this traffic while almost all of the remaining 2 million accrued to BEA. 1971 was also the year the latter's last Berlin-based Viscount departed the city.

East Germany's relaxation of border controls affecting all surface transport modes between West Berlin and West Germany across its territory from 1972 onwards resulted in a decline of scheduled internal German air traffic from/to West Berlin. This was further compounded by the economic downturn in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The resulting fare increases that were intended to recover the airlines' higher operating costs caused by steeply rising jet fuel prices led to a further drop in demand. This in turn resulted in a major contraction of Pan Am's and BEA's/British Airways's internal German operations, necessitating a reduction in both airlines' Berlin-based fleets and workforces in an attempt to contain growing losses these once profitable routes generated by the mid-1970s.

On 1 September 1975, Pan Am and British Airways moved their entire Berlin operation to the newly built terminal at Tegel Airport. Following Pan Am's and British Airways's move to Tegel, commercial operations at Tempelhof ceased, resulting in exclusive use by the US military.

From 1978, Pan Am relocated its 727 flightdeck crew training from Miami International Airport to Berlin Tempelhof. This involved training all pilots and flight engineers who manned the flight decks of the airline's 727 fleet, which at the time operated out of Miami to the Caribbean and Central America, as well as on the IGS routes from Berlin and intra-European feeder routes serving Frankfurt and Heathrow.

Commercial operations restarted in 1981, when US-incorporated regional airline start-up Tempelhof Airways began a corporate shuttle between Tempelhof and Paderborn under contract to former German computer manufacturer Nixdorf whose main factories and offices were located in Paderborn and West Berlin respectively. Tempelhof Airways's initial equipment comprised Cessna Conquest and Piper Navajo executive aircraft. In 1985, the airline converted the Tempelhof–Paderborn corporate shuttle into a full-fledged scheduled service using a Nord 262 commuter turboprop.

The end of the Cold War and German reunification opened Tempelhof for non-allied air traffic on 3 October 1990. US President Bill Clinton christened a new Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport plane (serial number 96-0006) the Spirit of Berlin at Tempelhof on 12 May 1998, to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Blockade on 12 May 1949.

Towards the end, commercial use was mostly in the form of small commuter aircraft flying regionally. Plans had been in place to shut down Tempelhof and Tegel, and make Schönefeld the sole commercial airport for Berlin.

Read more about this topic:  Berlin Tempelhof Airport, History

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