Hapag-Lloyd Flug

If you took a vacation flight between the 1970s and the 2000s, you may well have sat in a Hapag-Lloyd aircraft. The leisure airline from Hanover took millions of Germans to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands, flew widebodies like the Airbus A310 on vacation routes, and in 1998 became the first airline in the world to receive a Boeing 737-800. The brand has been gone since 2007 – it lives on in TUIfly. This page shows you how Hapag-Lloyd Flug came about, which aircraft it flew, how to recognize its jets in old photos and how Hapag-Lloyd became TUIfly.

Hapag-Lloyd Flug at a glance

Hapag-Lloyd Flug was a German leisure and charter airline based in Langenhagen at Hanover Airport. It was founded in 1972, not by a tour operator but by a shipping line: Hapag-Lloyd, formed a few years earlier from the merger of HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd, initially wanted to fly its own cruise guests to the ports and quickly moved into the growing charter business. On March 30, 1973, the first flight took off – a Boeing 727 from Hamburg to Ibiza.

The business model was classic for a leisure airline: tour operators bought capacity, and Hapag-Lloyd flew vacationers to destinations around the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands and other sunny regions. The home airport was Hanover, but aircraft were also stationed at other German airports, including Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. That put Hapag-Lloyd in direct competition with Condor, LTU and later Aero Lloyd.

Unlike many historic airlines, Hapag-Lloyd Flug did not end in bankruptcy. In the late 1990s, the company joined the Preussag group together with its parent, and TUI emerged from that group; it eventually became the germ cell of TUIfly. Anyone who watches a TUIfly 737 take off in Hanover today is essentially looking at the continuation of Hapag-Lloyd Flug.

The history in stages

The good 34 years of Hapag-Lloyd Flug can be roughly divided into four phases: the start with the 727, growth through the takeover of Bavaria Germanair, the big modernization from the late 1980s and finally the integration into the TUI world.

The most interesting part is the takeover of Bavaria Germanair. Munich-based Bavaria and Frankfurt-based Germanair had only merged on March 1, 1977, and a few weeks later the new company went to Hapag-Lloyd. Because the Federal Cartel Office only approved at the end of 1978, the actual merger came in January 1979. That made Hapag-Lloyd grow significantly in one stroke and gave it its first widebody jets.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code HF: appeared in the flight number, so on boarding passes, departure boards and tour operator documents.
• ICAO code HLF: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and shows up today in archives and old flight data.
• Callsign HAPAG LLOYD: how the crew identified themselves on the radio.

One distinction matters when evaluating old records: the low-cost sister Hapag-Lloyd Express used its own ICAO code (HLX) and the striking callsign “YELLOW CAB”. If a Hapag-Lloyd Flug jet was flying on behalf of HLX, it could therefore be operating under a different identity. The article on airline callsigns and their history tells more about such radio names.

The Hapag-Lloyd Flug fleet

Over three decades, Hapag-Lloyd went through several generations of aircraft. A large part of the fleet was obtained through leasing companies. The exact numbers per type differ depending on the source, because some aircraft flew only briefly or on lease – the table therefore gives the periods and the role of each type.

Type	Period (approx.)	Spotter note
Boeing 727-100	1973 to the mid-1980s	The type of the first flight, a three-engine jet with a T-tail
Boeing 727-200	around 1979 to the early 1980s	Stretched version, only a few examples
BAC One-Eleven 500	1979–1981	Taken over from Bavaria Germanair, retired quickly
Airbus A300B4	1979 to the late 1980s	First widebody jets, partly from Bavaria Germanair
Boeing 737-200	1981–1993	Replacement for the 727 and One-Eleven, slim engines under the wing
Airbus A310	1988–2006	-200 and -300, widebody on vacation routes
Boeing 737-400	1989 to the early 2000s	Classic generation, longest Classic type
Boeing 737-500	1990–2004	Shortest Classic type
Boeing 737-800	1998–2007	Launch customer worldwide, finally the backbone of the fleet

The Boeing 727 was the aircraft of the founding years. With three engines at the rear and a T-tail, it stands out clearly in old photos from everything that came later. Together with the BAC One-Eleven taken over from Bavaria Germanair, it was replaced by the Boeing 737-200 from 1981.

On longer and high-demand routes, Hapag-Lloyd turned to widebody jets early. First came the Airbus A300B4, and from 1988 the somewhat shorter A310. A twin-aisle Airbus on its way to Mallorca or Tenerife was a typical sight back then – today that is a rarity on vacation routes. At times Hapag-Lloyd also flew the A310 to long-haul destinations, such as in North America and the Dominican Republic; many of these long-haul routes were dropped again, though. In the mid-2000s, the airline sold the last A310s and went all in on the 737. The manufacturer of both widebody types is Airbus.

From 1989 the Boeing 737 Classic joined the fleet in the form of the -400 and -500, and from 1998 the 737-800. For spotters, this moment is a piece of aviation history: Hapag-Lloyd was the launch customer of the 737-800 and in spring 1998 took delivery of the first examples of this type as the first airline in the world. What began as a leisure airline order later became the most-built member of the Next Generation family from Boeing. How to tell the 737 generations apart is explained in the guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

How to recognize Hapag-Lloyd Flug

Because the brand no longer exists, you only come across Hapag-Lloyd Flug in photos, slides and archives. There are two liveries you need to know.

The classic look (until 2002): For almost three decades, the jets flew in orange and blue with “Hapag-Lloyd” titles. The color combination is unmistakable in old vacation photos from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and it is one of the liveries that spotters would love to see as a retro livery today. Which airlines revive old designs is shown in the article on retro liveries.

The TUI design (from 2002): After TUI introduced a new logo, Hapag-Lloyd also switched to a lighter livery in blue, white and red with the TUI logo on the tail. This look is the direct predecessor of the later TUIfly livery – so on photos from 2002 to 2007, the titles on the fuselage are decisive.

German registrations follow a system based on weight classes: all jets in the fleet carry a D-A, followed by three more letters. How the system works is explained in the article on German aircraft registrations.

Hapag-Lloyd Flug and Hapag-Lloyd Express

In 2002, TUI launched its own low-cost brand, Hapag-Lloyd Express, shortly after the start of Germanwings. HLX sold individual seats directly to passengers and flew from bases such as Cologne/Bonn, Hanover and Stuttgart to destinations all over Europe. The aircraft came by wet lease, meaning with crew, from its leisure sister Hapag-Lloyd Flug and from Germania.

Feature	Hapag-Lloyd Flug	Hapag-Lloyd Express
Period	1972–2007	2002–2007
Business model	Leisure airline for tour operators	Low-cost carrier selling individual seats
ICAO code	HLF	HLX
Callsign	HAPAG LLOYD	YELLOW CAB
Look	Orange-blue, TUI design from 2002	Yellow in taxi style
Successor	TUIfly	TUIfly

For classifying old data, that means: a Hapag-Lloyd Flug jet can appear in its own livery in a photo and still have been operating for HLX at the time. What makes the difference between charter and individual seat sales is explained in the article Charter flights vs. scheduled flights.

Flight 3378: the emergency landing in Vienna

The only hull-loss accident in the airline’s history happened on July 12, 2000. The A310 D-AHLB was en route from Chania on Crete to Hanover when, after takeoff, one main landing gear could not be fully retracted. The crew continued but underestimated the significantly higher fuel consumption caused by the extended gear. Shortly before Vienna-Schwechat, the engines flamed out, and the aircraft touched down a few hundred meters short of the runway.

All 151 people on board survived, and 26 passengers were slightly injured. The A310 was beyond repair afterward. The captain was later sentenced by the Hanover district court to a suspended prison term for dangerous interference with air traffic.

From Hapagfly to TUIfly

With the switch to the TUI livery in 2002, the path was set. In the mid-2000s, the airline operated as Hapagfly, introduced the “bluemiles” frequent flyer program and sold the last widebody jets. In December 2006, TUI then announced the new umbrella brand TUIfly, which replaced Hapagfly and Hapag-Lloyd Express from January 2007.

What is special about this ending: company, headquarters, home airport and aircraft type remained. The 737-800, which Hapag-Lloyd had taken delivery of as the first airline in 1998, became the workhorse of TUIfly. Today TUIfly belongs to the TUI Group airlines, alongside sisters such as TUI fly Belgium, TUI fly Netherlands and TUI Airways.

Hapag-Lloyd in everyday spotting today

You can no longer see Hapag-Lloyd Flug live. The airline lives on in three forms: in old photos and slides, in aircraft that kept flying with new registrations after their Hapag-Lloyd time, and in TUIfly as its direct successor.

If you want to trace a former Hapag-Lloyd jet, you need the serial number: it stays the same through all re-registrations, while registrations and liveries change. That is how you connect an old vacation photo with a later sighting. For jets from the 1970s and 1980s, though, the chances are slim – most 727s, A300s and early 737s have long been retired.

For a visit to the former home airport, the observation deck at Hanover Airport is a good choice; tips on more locations are in the guide Plane spotting in Hanover. If you are interested in the aviation history of the region, the Hanover-Laatzen aviation museum is a worthwhile destination nearby. And since Mallorca was one of the classic destinations of leisure airlines, it is also worth a look at Palma de Mallorca, where TUI jets are still part of everyday life.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Hapag-Lloyd Flug with the shipping line – the container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd has nothing to do with aviation anymore.
• Confusing Hapag-Lloyd Flug with Hapag-Lloyd Express – two brands with different business models, codes and looks.
• Taking every photo in the TUI design for Hapag-Lloyd – after 2007, similar jets were already flying as TUIfly.
• Swapping the A310 and A300 – the A310 is shorter and has fewer windows; the A300B4 was the older and larger type.
• Equating the 737-200 and 737-400 – the -200 has slim, long engines, while the Classic types have the typically flattened engine inlets.
• Confusing Hapag-Lloyd with Aero Lloyd – Aero Lloyd was a separate leisure airline from Oberursel.

Conclusion

Hapag-Lloyd Flug was a fixture of German leisure flying for three decades – from the shipping-line subsidiary with the 727 through the widebody years with the A300 and A310 to the world premiere of the 737-800. Instead of ending in bankruptcy, the story ended with a rebrand: Hapagfly became TUIfly, and the successor still flies in Hanover today. If you are sorting old photos, the registration keeps this airline’s history neatly recorded.