FlyerWx

This is very true, and a bit sad that I am left to reminisce about those days.

DL even acquired 5th freedom rights to fly from FRA-BOM/DEL in the 90s, which seems unreal given today's airport-alliance setup.

sinoflyer

Another bit of history, which I'm sure you know well, is that LH wasn't allowed to fly into Berlin (THF, TXL, SXF) until the mid- or late-1990s.

added: Was Hamburg in the American Zone, which was why PA had that route and which DL later inherited? The fifth-freedom from FRA was not different than the fifth freedom NW (DL) and PA (UA) had/have in NRT.

N702ML

If anyone is interested, here are the number of weekly flights to the destinations served from the Frankfurt hub between 1991 and 1997:

http://www.departedflights.com/DLFRAhub.html

ClipperDelta

Delta never inherited Pan Am's IGS (Internal German Service) operations. Pan Am sold that piece to Lufthansa in 1990, well before DL took over Pan Am's TATL ops in November 1991.

Pan Am (and hence Delta) didn't have fifth freedom rights on allof its flights out of FRA...FRA-ATH was one where they didn't (I have a Pan Am schedule which specifically says "No local traffic rights" under the FRA-ATH flight listing).

Robert Leach

As with a lot of things PanAm, it did not make sense to have a dedicated fleet of 727 aircraft sitting there in Germany operating a couple of flights a day. It was just horrible underutilization of equipment, if nothing else.

But a fascinating part of Delta history.

zrs70

No, I know the Delta downsized the hub in Cincinnati. I didn't realize they once had a hub in Lexington/Frankfort as well!

KDCAflyer

I was really considering pointing that out, but refrained.

N702ML

With all due respect, I am not sure if you are referring to the Internal German Services, but Pan Am's operations out of Berlin on the IGS routes were actually far more than "a couple of flights a day."

In the May 24, 1990 timetable, Pan Am was operating jet aircraft on 65 daily IGS flights:

Berlin-Dusseldorf (3x daily)
Berlin-Frankfurt (16x daily including at least one A310 widebody)
Berlin-Hamburg (6x daily)
Berlin-Munich (6x daily)
Berlin-Nuremberg (3x daily)
Berlin-Stuggart (4x daily)

This was in addition to multiple Pan Am Express aircraft operating from Berlin to Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Kiel, Strasbourg and Westerland.

us2

The reason LH couldn't fly into Berlin was that it was technically under the control of the Allies under the Four Powers Agreement. It took the end of that agreement and the granting of German legal sovereignty over Berlin to end the prohibition, which officially ended on October 3, 1990 when Germany was officially reunified. As I recall, the end of the PA Inter German Service took place shortly after the reunification of Germany in late October 1990. Since Lufthansa did not have the equipment to assume the service, it purchased the operation from Pan Am.

Hamburg was in the British zone originally, but those distinctions became moot with the formation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Pan Am served not only Hamburg, but Hannover and Cologne as well. All three were in the former British zone.

char777

Fascinating thread!

I think this is true to an extent, and you can even see the same effect today with the drawdown of the NRT hub, but the European hubs made sense at one point in time. They developed out of necessity because it was the only way to serve smaller European markets in the early jet age. By the 1980s and 1990s, PA still didn't really have any equipment in their fleet to fly those longer and thinner routes nonstop, and it was before all the JVs and codeshares were common. They had a bunch of 747-100s which were dinosaurs by that point, and I believe they were mostly used on their TPAC network. PA had some new A300s and A310s, but those weren't really ideal for much more than East Coast US-Western Europe. Unlike PA's competitors, they also didn't really have any modern workhorse aircraft on order that really opened up more long and thin nonstop TATL routes — 767/777s, MD11s, and A330/340s, though of course they didn't really have the money to buy much by that point anyway.

It makes complete sense why DL would eventually kill off the intra-European routes, as DL had better equipment to serve Europe nonstop (767, L-1011, MD-11), and DL started to grow partnerships with AF and SR (remember that one?).

CJKatl

I remember being in my twenties in ATL when FRA was a hub. So many male flight attendant friends and their friends and families would fly to FRA for weekend debauchery.

flyerCO

Glad I read ahead, was about to post same thing. Guess because of how many people misspell my last name this type of thing drives me nuts.

sinoflyer

Thanks for clearing my rusty memory. So I was mistaken that DL for a time operated a FRA hub and a mini Berlin ops to West Germany. It did not have the latter.

The Allies maintained 3 air corridors from West Germany to West Berlin: Hanover, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. I took from that fact to assume that only the national airline or flag carrier could serve their respective occupation zones. That too was incorrect.

Nevertheless, I presume that the Inter-German flights operated at low altitude all the way until the end. It would have been a thrilling experience, especially flying into THF.

AF came into the picture later. Before that, DL developed an "Atlantic Excellence" partnership with SR, SN, and OS.

us2

The three West Berlin air corridors had a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet and were set up by the four powers after the war. The restriction on their use was to aircraft registered to one of the 3 western allies (UK, US, France) flown by pilots who were also passport holders of those 3 countries. This is why Lufthansa couldn't fly the route until after reunification when the whole scheme was scrapped. Needless to say, flying jets at that low altitude was very inefficient. I seem to recall that major carrier service to Templehof was stopped in the mid 1970s with operations moving to Tegel.

Ber2dca

Perhaps an interesting detail related to that is that airberlin actually started out as a U.S.-registered airline which enabled it to bypass the restrictions on German airline use of West Berlin airports.

Lufthansa meanwhile tried to circumvent the restriction by starting a joint venture with Air France called "Euroberlin".

The legacy of this whole issue is that Berlin is the largest 'open' market in Europe (i.e. not in the bag of any one airline or alliance).