Air Berlin began as an American charter firm owned by an Oregon farm business
During the Cold War, West German airlines could not fly into West Berlin at all. Only British, French and American carriers were allowed along the air corridors. So in 1978 an Oregon agricultural company set up an American airline to fly Berliners to Mediterranean beaches, and it grew into Germany's second-biggest carrier.
Air Berlin USA was a subsidiary of Lelco, the farming business of the family of Kim Lundgren, a former Pan Am flight engineer based in Berlin. Its first revenue flight left Tegel for Palma de Mallorca on 28 April 1979 aboard a Boeing 707 bought from TWA. Through much of the 1980s it ran just a single Boeing 737, along with a weekly scheduled service to Orlando via Brussels while the 707s lasted.
German reunification opened Berlin to German airlines, and in 1991, with about 90 employees, the company was restructured as a German firm under Joachim Hunold, formerly of LTU. It introduced direct-booking flights in 1997, first linking smaller German airports with Mallorca, then launched City Shuttle routes to London, Barcelona, Milan and Vienna in 2002. Unlike budget rivals such as Ryanair, it kept free meals and seat reservations, earning a reputation as a semi-low-cost carrier. In 2001 it and Hapag-Lloyd became the first airlines to fit blended winglets to their 737-800s, and one delivery flight that year flew non-stop from Seattle to Berlin.
Expansion came quickly. The airline floated on the Frankfurt exchange in May 2006, bought the domestic carrier dba that August, and ordered 75 Boeing 737s worth 5.1 billion dollars at list price. In March 2007 it swallowed the leisure airline LTU, bringing long-haul Airbus jets and making the group the fourth largest in Europe by passengers. It took stakes in Austria's Niki and Switzerland's Belair, and joined the Oneworld alliance in 2012.
Growth never translated into lasting profit. Losses piled up year after year until the company declared itself insolvent in August 2017; its last flights came two months afterwards.
Source: Air Berlin
