InterSky

If you were around Lake Constance between 2004 and 2015, you know the picture: a small propeller aircraft with the InterSky titles banks over the lake and lands at Friedrichshafen. The airline was small but important for the region – and it was a curious case: Austrian-registered, headquartered in Bregenz, but with its home base on the German side of the lake. This page shows you where InterSky came from, which aircraft it flew and how to recognize its aircraft in your photo archive.

InterSky at a glance

InterSky was an Austrian regional airline headquartered in Bregenz. InterSky Luftfahrt GmbH was founded in November 2001 by Renate Moser and Rolf Seewald. The two were no newcomers to the industry: shortly before, they had sold their first airline, the Vorarlberg-based Rheintalflug. With InterSky they practically started from scratch – with a single aircraft, a Dash 8-300.

The first flight took place on March 25, 2002. The starting point back then was not Lake Constance but Bern-Belp Airport: from there InterSky flew to Berlin and Vienna. From 2004 the airline shifted its focus to Friedrichshafen, and in 2005 it withdrew from Bern entirely. On Lake Constance, InterSky became the airport’s defining airline.

Around 13 years later it was over. On November 5, 2015 the leasing company picked up four of the five aircraft, and that same evening InterSky ceased flight operations.

The history in stages

InterSky’s story is easy to tell in stations – from the fresh start in Bern through the years on Lake Constance to the abrupt end.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 3L: appeared in the flight number, so on boarding passes, departures boards and in the booking system.
• ICAO code ISK: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and shows up in old tracker data.
• Callsign INTERSKY: how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

On the last evening in 2015, the ISK codes were easy to follow, by the way: flights that were supposed to go from Düsseldorf or Berlin-Tegel to Friedrichshafen landed in Maastricht instead. Anyone with a flight tracker open at the time could follow the end of the airline live.

The InterSky fleet

InterSky never operated a jet. The airline relied on turboprops with 50 to 70 seats – just the right size for routes between regional airports and big cities where an Airbus or a Boeing would have been too large.

Type	Period	Seats	Role	Spotter tip
Dash 8-300	2002 to 2015	50	Backbone of the fleet, at times four examples	High-wing with T-tail, main landing gear in long engine nacelles
ATR 42	2010, leased	–	brief supplement	Short fuselage, landing gear in fairings on the fuselage
ATR 72-600	2013 to 2015	70	Newest and largest aircraft	Long fuselage, six-blade propellers
ATR 72-200	2013, leased	–	Stopgap on wet lease	Older ATR 72 generation with four-blade propellers

At the end, in November 2015, the fleet consisted of three Dash 8-300s and two ATR 72-600s. The Dash 8-300 was the aircraft InterSky started with and the one you most likely associate with the airline. It comes from the Dash 8 family of De Havilland Canada, later built under the umbrella of Bombardier – which is why you also read “Bombardier Dash 8 Q300” in some sources.

InterSky ordered the ATR 72-600 in summer 2012, and in early 2013 the two aircraft entered service one after the other. They are considered the first ATR aircraft that an Austrian airline took into its own fleet. With 70 seats they offered 20 more seats than the Dash 8-300. The manufacturer is the French-Italian company ATR. The briefly leased ATR 72-200 helped out at times from 2013.

Two long flights are noteworthy, with which InterSky made its ATR 72-600s known: in late November 2013 OE-LID flew nonstop from Friedrichshafen to Krasnodar in Russia, and in July 2015 an ATR 72-600 took an Albanian football club from Belfast to Tirana. Both flights lasted more than five hours – an unusual distance for a regional turboprop.

Documented registrations

A complete fleet list with all registrations is not consistently documented in the sources. Some registrations are well documented, though:

Registration	Type	What is known about it
OE-LIA	Dash 8-300	Was still flying Zurich–Graz on the last day of operations
OE-LSB	Dash 8-300	Was parked in Friedrichshafen in the last days before the end
OE-LIE	Dash 8-300	Sold to Maldivian in January 2012
OE-LID	ATR 72-600	Flew nonstop from Friedrichshafen to Krasnodar in November 2013

All aircraft carried Austrian registrations with OE-, although they were almost always based in Germany. That is the easiest way to tell InterSky apart from German regional airlines. You can rediscover the former OE-LIE at Maldivian in the Maldives, by the way, provided it is still flying there – check the current status before searching.

How to recognize InterSky

InterSky flew under its own brand and not in the look of a big partner. The “InterSky” titles on the fuselage therefore make identification easier than with airlines that flew on behalf of a group. The question of the type is harder – because the Dash 8 and ATR look similar at first glance.

The guide Telling ATR and Dash 8 apart helps with distinguishing the types. The rule of thumb: both have a T-tail, and the landing gear is the deciding factor. The Dash 8 retracts it into the long engine nacelles and stands tall-legged, while the ATR stows it in fairings on the fuselage and squats low to the ground.

Routes and stations

InterSky’s network was small but well thought out. The core was connections from Lake Constance to big German cities, on which business travelers would otherwise have had to put up with long train or car journeys.

• From Friedrichshafen: Berlin (first Tempelhof, then Tegel), Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn, in part several times a day. Münster/Osnabrück was given up in 2011 in favor of more Düsseldorf flights.
• Austria–Switzerland: From 2013 InterSky connected Graz and Salzburg with Zurich. The airline served Vienna until the end of 2012.
• Summer leisure routes: Seasonally it went to destinations such as Elba, Menorca, Pula and Zadar, and Munich and Altenrhein were also at times in the summer schedule. Charter flights were added.
• Other bases: From 2013 InterSky at times flew from Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden to Hamburg, and in 2015 Memmingen was added, connected via routes from Friedrichshafen.

On many domestic routes InterSky met tough competition. When Germanwings entered the Cologne/Bonn route in 2010, InterSky initially withdrew from it and only came back later. From May 2011 there was also a sales cooperation with Air Berlin – a partnership in ticket sales, but not a takeover.

Why InterSky failed

Small regional airlines live on thin margins. InterSky was no exception: good and bad years alternated, and in 2011 the airline ran into financial difficulties.

In February 2012, Hans Rudolf Wöhrl and Peter Oncken came in with their company Intro Aviation and took the majority. In 2014 a combination with CityJet, which Intro Aviation owned at the time, was even under discussion. Nothing came of it.

In September 2015 it became known that InterSky was to be sold. At the same time the Austrian transport ministry threatened to revoke the operating license if the airline could not demonstrate its financial capability. Negotiations with the investor MDA Mitteldeutsche Aviation failed. On November 5, 2015 the leasing company Castlelake took back its aircraft: two ATR 72-600s and two Dash 8-300s were ferried to Maastricht-Aachen. Around 150 employees lost their jobs. You can find more background in the overview of major airline bankruptcies in Europe and on regional airlines in Europe.

The last day

November 5, 2015 still began like a normal operating day. In the evening InterSky canceled all flights and stopped ticket sales. Several aircraft that were supposed to return to Lake Constance from Düsseldorf and Berlin-Tegel flew to Maastricht instead. One of the last missions was flown by the Dash 8-300 OE-LIA between Zurich and Graz – according to reports the only aircraft owned by the airline, which is why it was not picked up.

On November 9, 2015 the insolvency filing followed at the Feldkirch Regional Court, and a few days later the court ordered the closure. For Friedrichshafen the end of InterSky meant a noticeable setback because many direct connections to German big cities were lost.

Spotting today: traces on Lake Constance

You can no longer see InterSky itself. The airline nevertheless remains interesting. Many spotters have pictures from Friedrichshafen in their archives that they never labeled properly. The article Archiving aircraft photos provides tips for a well-thought-out filing system.

If you travel to Lake Constance today, you still find hands-on aviation there: around the AERO Friedrichshafen trade show there is a lot going on at the airport, and on the Swiss side the Fliegermuseum Altenrhein (aviation museum) is worth a visit. In Zurich, one of InterSky’s last destinations, the Butzenbüel is a popular spot. And if you want to follow the fleet’s trail: at Maastricht Aachen Airport the path of most InterSky aircraft ended in 2015.

As a counterpart from Austria, take a look at Tyrolean Airways, which also flew Dash 8s but belonged to the Austrian group – and at Austrian Airlines, which today provides most of Austria’s scheduled service.

Common mix-ups

• Taking InterSky for a German airline – headquarters and registrations were Austrian, only the home base was in Germany.
• Confusing InterSky with People’s – both are Lake Constance airlines with OE- registrations, but People’s flies from Altenrhein and with jets.
• Mixing up the Dash 8-300 and ATR 72-600 – both have a T-tail, and the surest feature is the landing gear: nacelle on the Dash 8, fuselage fairing on the ATR.
• Reading the Air Berlin sales cooperation as a takeover – it was only about ticket sales, and InterSky remained independent.
• Logging photos after November 2015 as InterSky – from then on the aircraft flew for new operators.

Conclusion

InterSky was the airline of Lake Constance: Austrian-registered, at home in Friedrichshafen and flying small turboprops on routes that were hardly worthwhile for larger airlines. For thirteen years it connected the region with Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn, before a failed sale and the withdrawal of the leased aircraft brought the end. With the titles, OE- registration and a look at the landing gear, you can reliably classify your archive photos.