Cimber Air / Cimber Sterling

If you stood at the fence in Copenhagen, Billund or Sønderborg before 2012, you knew the small aircraft of Cimber: ATR turboprops and CRJ regional jets that connected provincial Denmark with the capital and with Europe. The airline from southern Jutland has an unusually long history – from the single-engine propeller aircraft in 1950 to the bankruptcy as Cimber Sterling in May 2012. Here you learn how the airline came about, who it worked with, which types it flew and how to recognize it in old photos.

Cimber Air at a glance

Cimber Air was a Danish regional airline based in Sønderborg that existed from 1950 to 2012. In its last years it operated as Cimber Sterling. Its core business was domestic flights between Copenhagen and smaller airports such as Sønderborg, Billund, Karup, Aalborg, Aarhus and Rønne on Bornholm, plus connections to other European countries.

Typical of Cimber was its close cooperation with large network airlines. For many years it flew feeder traffic for Lufthansa, and at times SAS held a stake in it. When the leisure airline Sterling collapsed at the end of 2008, Cimber bought its name and takeoff rights – and thereby grew beyond the classic regional business. Barely three and a half years later it was over: on May 3, 2012, Cimber Sterling ceased flight operations.

The history in stages

The roots go back to the postwar period. In 1947 the small Sønderjyllands Flyveselskab was founded in southern Jutland. In 1950 the then 26-year-old pilot Ingolf Lorenz Nielsen took it over, and in 1953 he gave the company the name Cimber Air Service A/S. The name recalls the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that ancient sources place in Jutland.

The early years were marked by casual and charter flights, as small aviation businesses offered them at the time. Sønderborg is close to the German border, so connections to northern Germany also played a role. The path to a scheduled airline led via the Dove, of which Cimber used several examples in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code QI: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards.
• ICAO code CIM: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign CIMBER: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

The ICAO code outlived the airline. The successor company Cimber A/S, founded in 2012, also flew as CIM with the callsign “CIMBER”. So if you still see CIM in flight data after 2012, it means the new company, not the old Cimber Sterling.

Partner of Lufthansa and SAS

For a small provincial airline, Cimber had surprisingly early contacts with the big players. Under a contract with Lufthansa, a German subsidiary was set up that connected Flensburg with Sønderborg and Hamburg. That contract expired in 1973. At home in Denmark, Cimber took a 15 percent stake from 1971 in the Danair consortium, in which SAS and Maersk Air pooled parts of the domestic traffic.

In 1996 Cimber Air joined the Team Lufthansa network. In it, independent regional airlines flew feeder routes under Lufthansa flight numbers and in a Lufthansa-like look, similar to the group subsidiary Lufthansa CityLine. At Cimber, mainly ATR 42s wore this look. How such cooperations work on paper is explained in the article on codeshare flights.

In parallel, SAS bought into Cimber in 1998 with around a quarter of the shares and sold the stake back in 2003. The connection stayed close afterward, too: until the end, four Cimber CRJ200s flew on behalf of SAS.

The Cimber fleet

Hardly any Danish regional airline flew as many types. The beginnings were small propeller aircraft and the de Havilland Dove. From 1967 the French Nord 262 was added, a turboprop for fewer than 30 passengers, of which Cimber used four examples.

In the 1970s Cimber dared the leap to jets. The German VFW-Fokker 614 was a choice with obstacles: because production ended early, Cimber switched to the Fokker F28 Fellowship. At times the airline also used a Grumman Gulfstream I on scheduled services. During the crisis around 1980, the F28s were leased out abroad, and a Fokker F27 filled in.

From 1992, turboprops from ATR shaped the picture, and from the late 1990s regional jets from Canadair, later Bombardier, too. In the early 2000s the fleet consisted of three ATR 42s, eight ATR 72s and seven CRJ200s – with that, Cimber served 17 routes with over 600 flights per week. With the Sterling name, Boeing 737-700s were added in 2009.

After taking over the Sterling name, the fleet looked like this in 2009:

Type	Number (2009)	Use	Spotter note
ATR 42-500	3	Domestic, thin routes	Shortest fuselage in the fleet
ATR 72-200 / ATR 72-500	5	Domestic and Scandinavia	-500 with six-blade propeller instead of four-blade
CRJ200	11	Europe and contracts for SAS	Four of them for SAS at the end
Boeing 737-700	6	Leisure and city destinations	Came with the Sterling era

With this mix, old Cimber photos are good for practicing type recognition. How to tell the ATR 42 and ATR 72 apart and distinguish the generations is shown in the guide Telling ATR and Dash 8 apart. For the CRJ200 and its relatives, the overview Recognizing regional jets helps.

From Cimber Air to Cimber Sterling

In autumn 2008 the Danish leisure airline Sterling collapsed. On December 3, 2008, Cimber Air bought the brand name, the operating license, the website and takeoff and landing rights in Copenhagen from the bankruptcy estate. The fleet was not part of the package, and the staff did not transfer automatically either. On January 7, 2009, Cimber Sterling emerged from this, and a week later the new brand took off.

That changed the profile. Besides the regional network, Cimber Sterling now offered destinations across Europe, around 30 in 2009, with Boeing 737-700s for the longer routes. Cimber Sterling’s shares were listed on the stock exchange in Copenhagen.

Phase	Period	What changed
Cimber Air	1953–2008	Regional airline with partnerships with Lufthansa and SAS
Cimber Sterling	2009–2012	Sterling name, 737-700, leisure and city destinations, stock market listing
Cimber A/S	from 2012	New company, flies on behalf of SAS

How to recognize Cimber

Because the airline flew for six decades and spent a long time flying for partners, there was no uniform appearance. In early photos you see propeller aircraft with “Cimber Air” titles, and in the Team Lufthansa period also aircraft in the Lufthansa-like look. From 2009, “Cimber Sterling” was on the fuselage. Two things are reliable: the Danish registration with OY- and the types of the late years.

Photos taken after May 2012 are a special case. CRJ200s that still flew with the CIM callsign then belonged to the new Cimber A/S and were flying for SAS.

Bases and routes

The company headquarters always remained in Sønderborg, but the most important hubs were elsewhere. In the last years, Copenhagen Airport and Billund Airport were the main bases, with Aalborg added as a smaller base.

The domestic network connected Copenhagen with Billund, Karup, Rønne, Sønderborg, Aalborg and Aarhus. For smaller places such as Sønderborg, Karup and Bornholm, Cimber was last the only connection to the capital. In addition there were international routes from Billund and Copenhagen, for example to Scandinavia and to city and leisure destinations in Europe. The CRJ200s also opened up longer connections, for example from Billund to Milan or from Copenhagen to Bucharest.

If you go looking for traces in Kastrup today, the guide to plane spotting in Copenhagen has the best locations, such as the Flyvergrillen at Copenhagen Airport.

The end: bankruptcy in 2012

The financial crisis from 2008 hit Cimber Sterling hard. In summer 2011 the owners changed: Mansvell Enterprises, a company from Cyprus backed by the Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskyi, came in and last held 70.8 percent. At the end of 2011 the airline announced a restructuring, focusing on domestic flights in Denmark and connections to Sweden; the Boeing 737s were to leave the fleet in 2012.

More than 600 people lost their jobs. Sønderborg, Karup, Bornholm and Billund were hit particularly hard, because Cimber was the only connection to Copenhagen there. SAS increased its own flights, and Danish regional airlines such as Danish Air Transport and Sun-Air of Scandinavia subsequently took over individual domestic routes.

The new Cimber A/S initially flew CRJ200s exclusively for SAS. In 2015 SAS took over the company, and in 2017 it went to CityJet. How the Cimber case fits into the series of other collapses is put in context by the article on major airline failures in Europe.

Cimber in a spotter’s life today

For your logbook, Cimber is a classic archive topic. If you photographed between the 1990s and 2012 in Copenhagen, Billund or at other airports in the airline’s network, Cimber ATRs or CRJ200s are quite possible – not always in its own design, but often flying for Lufthansa or SAS. With type, registration, location and date, an old picture becomes a clean logbook entry.

The surroundings are interesting too. Denmark always had a lively scene of small airlines, from Maersk Air through Sterling to Sun-Air and DAT. An overview of the role of such operators in Europe is in the article on regional airlines in Europe.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Cimber Sterling with Sterling – in 2008 Cimber took over only the name, license and slots, not the fleet.
• Attributing every CIM callsign to the old airline – after May 2012, the new Cimber A/S flew with it for SAS.
• Taking Team Lufthansa aircraft for Lufthansa’s own aircraft – the operator was Cimber, and the registration shows it.
• Letting Cimber Air be founded in 1953 – 1953 brought only the name; the company had existed since 1950.
• Noting the 737-700 as an early Cimber type – they came only with the Sterling era from 2009.

Conclusion

Cimber Air stands for six decades of Danish regional aviation: from the aerial photography flight over Sønderborg to ATRs and CRJs between Copenhagen, Jutland and Europe. The airline was a partner of Lufthansa and SAS, grew with the Sterling name – and failed in 2012 because of crisis and costs. For spotters, a look into the archive is worthwhile, at OY- registrations and at aircraft that kept flying elsewhere after Cimber.