dba

If you traveled on a domestic German route in the 1990s and early 2000s, you may have taken it for a British Airways aircraft: a Boeing 737 in BA style, but with a German registration and a flight number with DI. That was Deutsche BA, simply dba from 2003. The Munich airline took on Lufthansa, was sold for one euro, then posted its first profits and was finally absorbed into Air Berlin. Here you learn how the airline came about, which aircraft it flew and how to recognize it with confidence in old photos.

dba at a glance

dba was a German airline based at Munich Airport that flew from 1992 to 2008 under the names Deutsche BA and dba. Its roots go back further: it emerged from Delta Air, a small regional airline from Lake Constance. With the entry of British Airways in 1992 it became a serious competitor to Lufthansa on domestic German routes.

The airline’s profile stayed fairly constant over the years: scheduled flights between German major cities, supplemented by a few European destinations and charter flights for tour operators. From 1998 the fleet consisted only of the Boeing 737-300 – a textbook example of a uniform short-haul fleet.

The owners are where it got exciting. British Airways sold the airline in 2003 for a symbolic euro to the entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl. In 2006 Air Berlin bought dba, and at the end of 2008 its own flight operations ended. How dba fits into the growth story of Air Berlin is covered in detail in the magazine article on the history of Air Berlin.

The history in stages

The prehistory begins at Lake Constance. Delta Air was founded in the late 1970s as a small air taxi and regional flight company and connected German cities and Zurich from Friedrichshafen. It flew turboprops – initially small types such as the DHC-6 Twin Otter, later the Saab 340. The Swiss regional airline Crossair held a stake at times.

The decisive step was 1992. British Airways wanted to get into the German domestic market, but as a foreign company could not hold the capital majority of an airline flying domestic German routes. So BA took 49 percent of Delta Air, and the remaining shares went to Commerzbank, Bayerische Vereinsbank and Berliner Bank. With the new name Deutsche BA also came the switch from turboprop to jet.

Codes and callsigns

• IATA code DI: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards. Delta Air already used the code.
• ICAO code BAG: used by air traffic control in the flight plan, since the switch to Deutsche BA in 1992.
• Callsign SPEEDWAY: this is how the crews called in on the radio – it recalls the “SPEEDBIRD” of British Airways. Delta Air had previously called in as “BODENSEE”.

For your logbook that means: if BAG appears as the operator in old flight data, it means Deutsche BA or dba – not British Airways, whose code is BAW. Especially with photos from the 1990s this distinction matters, because the aircraft of both airlines looked strongly alike.

The British Airways era

Under the name Deutsche BA, the airline moved in 1994 to the new Munich Airport, which had opened a few years earlier. Munich became headquarters, maintenance site and most important base. Alongside it, Berlin Tegel played an important role in the route network. From 1993 Deutsche BA also flew charter for tour operators.

With the banks’ withdrawal in 1997 and 1998, control lay with British Airways. During this time the fleet was standardized on the Boeing 737-300 and its design aligned with the BA fleet. According to common reference works, Deutsche BA was also linked to the oneworld alliance as an affiliate between 1999 and 2002, without being a full member itself.

Economically the airline remained a problem child. Against Lufthansa’s dominance on domestic German routes it was hard to make money. In 2002 Deutsche BA tried to position itself more strongly as a low-cost airline with aggressive fares on individual routes and by dispensing with a frequent flyer program of its own. easyJet secured an option to buy in the same year, but waived it in spring 2003.

For one euro to dba

On June 2, 2003, British Airways sold its shares to Intro Verwaltungs GmbH of the entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl – for the symbolic price of one euro. The three letters dba remained as a brand of their own. British Airways secured the transition for a while longer, including on the fleet.

Under the new leadership the picture changed. From April 2004 Martin Gauss and Peter Wojahn ran the airline. In the 2004/05 fiscal year dba posted its first profit – after years of losses under British Airways.

In 2005 dba took over the business of Germania Express, gexx for short, which had been operated by the Germania group. That brought further routes and aircraft of the Fokker 100 type. With 27 aircraft and up to 180 flights a day, dba at times rose to become the third-largest German scheduled airline. In February 2006 Wöhrl also announced a stake in Düsseldorf-based LTU.

The dba fleet

The fleet history can be divided into three phases: turboprops under Delta Air, the pure 737 fleet under British Airways and the somewhat more mixed fleet of the dba years. The manufacturers of the jets were mainly Boeing and Fokker.

Type	Period	Use	Spotter tip
Saab 340	Delta Air and early Deutsche BA	Regional service from Friedrichshafen	Twin-engine turboprop
Saab 2000	Early Deutsche BA years	Regional service	Longer, faster successor to the Saab 340
Boeing 737-300	From 1992, from 1998 the only type	Domestic Germany and Europe	The airline’s backbone
Fokker 100	From 2005	City connections	From the Germania Express lease

When flight operations ended, dba flew up to 22 Boeing 737s according to available information. These aircraft went into the Air Berlin fleet, which itself operated numerous 737s at the time. For individual aircraft and possible special liveries, it is best to check the registration when in doubt.

The many Classic variants of the 737 are a nice exercise in type recognition. The -300, the 737-400 and the 737-500 differ mainly in fuselage length and the arrangement of the emergency exits over the wings. How to reliably tell the generations of the 737 apart is shown in the guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

How to recognize dba

Visually there were three appearances. Delta Air flew with a look of its own. From 1998 Deutsche BA adopted a design modeled on British Airways – so in photos from a distance, mix-ups with BA aircraft are almost bound to happen. In the 2000s the airline appeared under the short brand “dba”, written in lowercase.

After the takeover by Air Berlin, the brand was no longer shown outwardly from April 2007. Some aircraft were already flying in Air Berlin livery while flight operations formally still lay with dba. Such transition phases are a classic for mixed forms, as described in the article on hybrid and mixed liveries.

A small trademark on board was the chocolate hearts for passengers, which were later also handed out at Air Berlin. In the years under British Airways, readers of the magazine Capital also twice in a row voted Deutsche BA the cheapest and most punctual airline with the best service.

Route network and bases

The focus was clearly on Germany. dba connected major cities such as Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Leipzig/Halle, Dresden, Stuttgart, Munich, Münster/Osnabrück, Bremen, Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, Nuremberg and Frankfurt. That put it in direct competition with Lufthansa on many routes – and it was a real alternative for business travelers.

Abroad it went to Nice, Paris-Orly, Rome, Athens, Thessaloniki, Moscow, Rimini and Priština, among others. Charter flights for tour operators were added. The roots on Lake Constance, by contrast, faded quickly: Friedrichshafen Airport was central for Delta Air, but after the move to Munich it no longer played a main role.

If you want to spot today at the places of dba history, the visitors’ hill at Munich Airport (Besucherhügel) is one of the best-known locations in Germany. What you see there today is described in the guide to plane spotting at Munich Airport. In Hamburg, the observation deck at Hamburg Airport offers a comfortable view of the apron.

Takeover by Air Berlin and the end in 2008

On August 17, 2006, it became known that Air Berlin would take over dba completely. The Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) cleared the purchase on September 6, 2006. There was no official statement on the purchase price; various sums circulated in media reports. For Air Berlin, dba mainly brought the dense domestic German city network and a base in Munich.

In 2008 Air Berlin dissolved the dba administration as part of cost-cutting measures, and the aircraft moved into its own fleet. That ended the history of the Munich airline. Air Berlin itself filed for insolvency nine years later – how both cases fit into the series of major airline failures in Europe you can read in the magazine.

dba in everyday spotting today

For your logbook, dba is a pure archive topic. If you photographed at major German city airports between 1992 and 2008, you have good chances of Deutsche BA or dba aircraft in your collection. Sort these pictures with type, registration, location and date – that turns a memory photo into a clean logbook entry.

An appealing project is the search for traces: which 737 flew first for Deutsche BA, then for dba and afterward for Air Berlin? Via the serial number and registration, the life story can often be reconstructed without gaps. How that works is explained in the guide How old is this aircraft?. If you cannot attribute your photo unambiguously between BA and Deutsche BA because the registration is barely legible, the article Identifying an illegible registration helps.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Deutsche BA and British Airways – despite the BA design, Deutsche BA was an airline of its own, German, with D registrations and its own code.
• Confusing dba with Deutsche Bahn – the abbreviations are similar, but have nothing to do with each other.
• Confusing Delta Air with Delta Air Lines – the Lake Constance airline was a German regional company with no connection to the US company Delta Air Lines.
• Equating Germania Express and Germania – gexx was a scheduled brand of its own that was absorbed into dba in 2005.
• Dating the founding to 1992 – 1992 saw the name Deutsche BA come into being; the company itself had existed as Delta Air since the late 1970s.
• Taking every red-and-white 737 from 2007 for dba – after the takeover, dba aircraft were already flying in Air Berlin livery.

Conclusion

dba is an airline with a surprising number of chapters: from Lake Constance regional carrier to the German subsidiary of British Airways to an independent Munich airline that changed hands for one euro and afterward earned money for the first time. In the end it was absorbed into Air Berlin. For spotters what remains above all is the Boeing 737-300 in BA style with a German registration – a subject that is easily mixed up in old photos and is fun to identify for exactly that reason.