Hapag-Lloyd Express

Yellow like a New York taxi, with a black-and-white checkered band around the fuselage: hardly any aircraft of the early 2000s stood out on the apron like a Boeing 737 of Hapag-Lloyd Express. TUI’s low-cost airline flew under its own name for just over four years but left clear traces in many spotters’ archives. Here you learn how HLX came about, which aircraft it flew, who really operated them and how to reliably recognize the taxi jets in old photos.

Hapag-Lloyd Express at a glance

Hapag-Lloyd Express, HLX for short, was a German low-cost airline of the TUI group that flew under its own brand from December 2002 to January 2007. Its headquarters was in Hanover, or rather in Langenhagen right at the airport. Within the TUI airlines, HLX was an exception: while its sister companies mainly brought vacationers to holiday destinations, HLX relied on the low-cost model – cheap tickets, sales over the internet, point-to-point connections without changing planes.

One detail makes HLX especially exciting for spotters: the airline owned no aircraft of its own. The flights were operated by Hapag-Lloyd Flug and Germania on wet lease, that is, with their own aircraft and crews but on behalf of HLX and in its design. What that means in everyday terms is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

In January 2007, HLX merged together with Hapagfly into the new TUIfly brand, and the taxi design disappeared from the aircraft.

The history in stages

In the early 2000s, low-cost carriers were rapidly changing European air travel. Ryanair and easyJet grew strongly, and in Germany, too, big groups were looking for an answer. Eurowings launched Germanwings, and TUI bet on Hapag-Lloyd Express. Both, of all things, chose the same airport as their starting point: Cologne/Bonn.

Cologne/Bonn lies centrally in the densely populated west of Germany and became the stage for German low-cost competition in the early 2000s. How the airport is positioned today is covered in the entry on Cologne/Bonn Airport.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code X3: appeared in the flight number, on boarding passes and departure boards.
• ICAO code HLX: used by air traffic control in the flight plan; it was also the short form of the brand.
• Callsign YELLOW CAB: this is how the crews checked in on the radio – a callsign that carried the taxi idea all the way into the cockpit.

The callsign “YELLOW CAB” is one of the examples of airlines showing their brand on the radio too. The article Airline callsigns and their history collects more cases.

Fly for a taxi fare: the business model

HLX followed the classic rules of a low-cost carrier: a simple product, tight aircraft rotations, no free service on board and sales that took place almost entirely on the internet. How this model works in general is summarized in the article How low-cost carriers work.

The pricing system was typical for the industry. There was a changing allotment of very cheap tickets, which were usually snapped up quickly. After that, prices rose depending on demand. Striking were the so-called “HLX Happy Hours”: for poorly booked flights at unpopular times, tickets were available at zero fare, with only taxes and fees to pay.

The marketing was particularly remarkable. The slogan “Fly for a taxi fare” put the promise into a simple formula: a flight across Europe costs no more than a taxi ride in the city. The campaign won Effie awards for effective advertising, in Germany and at the European level. HLX also consistently relied on online sales: the vast majority of tickets were sold through its own website, hlx.com.

The Hapag-Lloyd Express fleet

Because HLX held no aircraft itself, the “fleet” was always a selection from its partners’ holdings. Most of it was provided by Hapag-Lloyd Flug, the TUI leisure airline from Hanover. Germania also flew a few aircraft on behalf of HLX. Almost all the aircraft were variants of the Boeing 737 – a typical picture for low-cost carriers that rely on a uniform type.

Type	Period at HLX	Operator	Spotter tip
Boeing 737-400	2003 only, single aircraft	Partner airline	Rarely photographed, a real archive piece
Boeing 737-500	2004–2007	Hapag-Lloyd Flug	Short Classic fuselage, also with special liveries
Boeing 737-700	2002–2007	Hapag-Lloyd Flug and Germania	The backbone of the HLX fleet
Boeing 737-800	2006–2007	Hapag-Lloyd Flug	Only joined in the late phase
Fokker 100	2005–2006	Germania	Only non-Boeing type in the HLX design

At the start, only four aircraft flew for HLX; after that the number fluctuated, because aircraft switched between the partners and HLX as needed. For classification, the type is usually enough: the 737-400 and 737-500 belong to the Classic generation, the 737-700 and 737-800 to the Next Generation with a new wing and a modernized cockpit. How to reliably tell the generations apart is shown in the guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

The Fokker 100 is the oddball in HLX history. Germania used two of these jets from the Dutch manufacturer Fokker for HLX. An HLX photo with a Fokker 100 is correspondingly rare.

How to recognize HLX: the taxi livery

The livery was the trademark par excellence. The model was the yellow Checker cabs that shaped New York’s street scene for decades. HLX transferred their look to the aircraft: a fuselage in bright yellow, a black-and-white checkerboard band around it, and the brand name in large letters. The message was clear – quick, direct, cheap, like a taxi ride.

For spotters this had a practical advantage: you can recognize an HLX aircraft in photos from a long way off. Even in poor light, the yellow stands out clearly against the white fuselages of other airlines. Why airlines otherwise mostly reach for white and which designs have made aviation history is shown in the article on legendary airline liveries.

Special liveries based on HLX

Besides the standard design, there were HLX aircraft that combined the taxi yellow with advertising or destination motifs. Such liveries are sought-after archive pictures today – check the registration and type on every photo, because reliable lists are rare. How to document special liveries systematically is explained in the article Collecting and documenting special liveries, and Special liveries of German airlines offers an overview of further motifs.

Bases and route network

HLX worked with decentralized bases instead of a single hub. The aircraft were stationed in Cologne/Bonn, Hanover, Leipzig/Halle and Stuttgart. There were also departures from Berlin-Tegel, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg and even Sylt. In total, the network covered around 40 destinations in ten European countries, mainly cities and holiday resorts that appealed to business travelers and weekend vacationers alike.

Base	Role at HLX	More
Cologne/Bonn	Starting point in December 2002, competition for Germanwings	Cologne/Bonn Airport
Hanover	Company headquarters, home of Hapag-Lloyd Flug	Hanover Airport
Stuttgart	Base in the south	Stuttgart Airport
Leipzig/Halle	Base in the east	Leipzig/Halle Airport

Not every new route lasted. In the rapid expansion of 2004, for example, connections from Hamburg and Stuttgart to Dublin were added, which HLX later dropped again. This constant testing and cutting of routes was typical of the fierce price war HLX fought with Ryanair, easyJet, Germanwings and other providers.

The end: merger into TUIfly

From 2005, TUI reorganized its airlines. The Hapag-Lloyd Fluggesellschaft operated as Hapagfly from 2005, and then came the bigger step: in December 2006, TUI announced the umbrella brand TUIfly, and on January 15, 2007, it replaced both Hapagfly and Hapag-Lloyd Express. With that, the name HLX disappeared from the aircraft.

For the look, that meant the taxi checkerboard disappeared with the HLX brand. Since 2014, TUIfly has flown in the blue design of the TUI group. In May 2024, though, the HLX design returned once more: the Boeing 737 MAX 8 D-AMAH wears a retro livery whose middle section is in the yellow taxi look with black checks – flanked by the Hapag-Lloyd Flug design at the rear and the current TUIfly colors at the front. The city connections, HLX’s real legacy, largely went to Air Berlin in 2009. How TUI organizes its airlines today is shown in the entry on the TUI airlines; how airlines repaint their fleets when changing brands is covered under When airlines change their design.

HLX in everyday spotting today

For your logbook, HLX is a classic archive topic. If you photographed in Cologne/Bonn, Hanover, Stuttgart or Leipzig/Halle between late 2002 and early 2007, you have good chances of yellow taxi jets in your collection. It is worth sorting these pictures after the fact: type, registration, place and date turn a snapshot into a clean entry – and with the actual operator it becomes truly valuable.

The search for what became of them is exciting too. Many 737s that once flew for HLX initially stayed in service at TUIfly and later went to other operators. Using the registration and the serial number, an aircraft’s life story can often be traced back; the guide How old is this aircraft? shows how.

If you want to visit the places of HLX history, you will find good vantage points at the observation deck at Cologne/Bonn Airport, the observation deck at Hanover Airport, the observation deck at Stuttgart Airport and the observation deck at Leipzig/Halle Airport. The guides Plane spotting in Cologne/Bonn, Plane spotting in Hanover and Plane spotting in Leipzig/Halle offer more tips. In Hanover, with a bit of luck, you may also get the retro aircraft D-AMAH in front of your lens.

Common mix-ups

• Equating HLX with TUIfly – TUIfly took over the code X3 but not the taxi checkerboard. The checkered band on a yellow background is the reliable HLX feature – the exception is the 2024 retro aircraft D-AMAH.
• Confusing HLX with Hapag-Lloyd Flug – Hapag-Lloyd Flug was the leisure airline that technically operated most HLX flights. HLX was the brand behind it.
• Taking every X3 flight number for HLX – from January 2007, X3 continued under TUIfly.
• Overlooking Germania registrations – some HLX aircraft, including the Fokker 100s, came from Germania.
• Confusing HLX with Germanwings – both launched in 2002 in Cologne/Bonn as low-cost carriers but belonged to different groups.
• Thinking hlx.com is the airline – since 2010 the brand has stood for an online tour operator with no flight operations of its own.

Conclusion

Hapag-Lloyd Express was in the air only briefly, but rarely has an airline left such a lasting impression in so few years. The taxi yellow with the checkerboard band, the slogan “Fly for a taxi fare” and the callsign “YELLOW CAB” turned a brand without aircraft of its own into a real eye-catcher. For spotters, a look back is worthwhile – at old photos, at the question of who really flew an aircraft, and at the 737s that kept flying afterward at TUIfly and elsewhere.