Interflug

If you come across old spotter photos from Schönefeld or Leipzig today, you see an aviation world that no longer exists: Ilyushin propeller aircraft, Tupolev jets with glazed noses and registrations beginning with DM- or DDR-. Behind them is almost always Interflug, the state airline of the GDR (East Germany). This page sums up how the airline came about, which aircraft it flew, why an Airbus in its colors suddenly appeared in 1989 – and where you can still find its aircraft today.

Interflug at a glance

Interflug was the state airline of the GDR and flew until April 30, 1991. From 1963 the country’s entire civil air traffic was in its hands: scheduled flights at home and abroad, charter flights to vacation areas, cargo and even agricultural aviation. Its home and hub was Berlin-Schönefeld Airport, which the GDR had expanded into its central airport – on whose grounds today’s Berlin Brandenburg Airport lies.

Measured against Western airlines, Interflug remained small. In 1983 it carried around 1.3 million passengers, and the route network was then about 122,000 kilometers long. Its weight lay elsewhere: for the GDR, Interflug was a showpiece, a source of hard currency and a political instrument all at once. The fleet came almost entirely from the Soviet Union – Western jets were only added at the very end.

If you want to read the story in narrative form, you will find it in the magazine feature on Interflug. Here it is about the compact profile and about what matters to spotters.

The history in stages

The founding of Interflug is a consequence of divided Germany. The GDR started in 1955 with its own Deutsche Lufthansa. Because West German Lufthansa took action against the use of the name, legal disputes loomed abroad. The GDR therefore founded Interflug in September 1958 as a second company – as a fallback in case the name Lufthansa had to be given up. In 1963 it came to that.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code IF: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departures boards.
• ICAO code IFL: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign INTERFLUG: how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

Since Interflug has not flown since 1991, you only encounter these codes in historical documents. More important for spotters are the registrations. Until October 1981 the aircraft carried the prefix DM-, afterward DDR- – the Il-62 of the later “Lady Agnes”, for example, was re-registered from DM-SEG to DDR-SEG on October 15, 1981. The letters after the prefix often reveal the type: well-known Il-62s carried SE.., preserved Tu-134s and Il-18s roughly SC.. and ST… Around reunification, individual aircraft already received West German D- registrations; the last flight in 1991 was operated with the Tu-134 D-AOBC.

The Interflug fleet

The fleet reflected the GDR’s ties to the Soviet Union. Until 1989, scheduled service practically only used types of Soviet production – similar to Aeroflot, Malév, LOT, TAROM or Balkan Bulgarian Airlines. In the mid-1980s the total fleet numbered around 50 aircraft, and in 1990 about 45.

Type	Use at Interflug	Role	Spotter tip
Ilyushin Il-14	from 1955 (East German Lufthansa), into the 1960s	First standard type	Twin-engine piston aircraft, partly built under license in the GDR
Ilyushin Il-18	from the early 1960s to 1991	Medium-haul, charter, cargo	Four turboprops, long the workhorse
Antonov An-24	Domestic service from 1967, until 1980	Domestic routes	Twin-engine high-wing aircraft
Tupolev Tu-134	from the late 1960s to 1991	Europe	First jet on European routes, glazed nose
Ilyushin Il-62	from 1970 to 1991	Long-haul, vacation flights	Flagship with four rear-mounted engines
Airbus A310	1989 to 1991	Long-haul	Three aircraft, the only Western jet
Let L-410	from 1982	Smaller missions	Small twin-engine turboprop aircraft

The Il-62 was the prestige aircraft. With it Interflug could serve distant destinations with jets for the first time from 1970, and until the arrival of the A310 it was considered the most economical type in the fleet. How to recognize the four-engine jet with its T-tail and tail prop is described in the type entry for the Il-62. The Tu-134 served the European capitals and remained in service until the last day of flying. The Tu-134 comes from the design bureau Tupolev, the Il-62 and Il-18 from Ilyushin, the An-24 from Antonov. The feature on Soviet airliners gives an overview of the whole type family.

One Interflug peculiarity was agricultural aviation. This operating division handled crop protection and fertilizing from the air, from 1967 also with the Czechoslovak Z-37 Čmelák. At the end of the 1980s around 280 aircraft belonged to this division – more than to the actual airline fleet.

The Airbus A310: a Western jet for the GDR

The most spectacular fleet decision came shortly before the end. In 1988 Interflug ordered three Airbus A310s worth around 420 million Deutsche Marks. The deal was brokered by the then Bavarian minister-president Franz Josef Strauß, who was also chairman of the Airbus supervisory board; it was financed through Western banks. In 1989 the A310-304s, equipped to Interflug’s wishes, were delivered – the first Airbus aircraft of an airline from the then Eastern Bloc. The crews were trained in France and West Germany, and as part of export conditions, maintenance was done in the West at Lufthansa Technik.

After the end of Interflug, the Federal Republic took over all three aircraft for the Luftwaffe. One flew as “Konrad Adenauer” (10+21) for the Flugbereitschaft (the government’s VIP flight wing), taking chancellors and ministers on state visits. In 2014 it went to Novespace and has flown as a parabolic-flight aircraft out of Bordeaux since 2015. The 10+23 went to the Serengeti Park Hodenhagen after its retirement in autumn 2025, which wants to turn it into a restaurant. That gives the Interflug A310 one of the most unusual biographies of a German airliner. You can read more about the type and its manufacturer Airbus in the entry on the A310.

How to recognize Interflug

Because the airline has not flown since 1991, you recognize Interflug mainly in old photos, in museums and in collections. Three features reliably help: the “INTERFLUG” titles on the fuselage, the Soviet types and the registrations with DM- or DDR-. The livery itself changed over the decades; early aircraft from the East German Lufthansa were first repainted, later just supplemented with the Interflug logo. How other liveries in aviation history looked is shown in the feature on legendary airline liveries.

Be careful with Il-62s and Tu-134s with DDR registrations: the GDR leadership used the same types as government aircraft, and some aircraft flew in Interflug look for state bodies. The GDR’s Tu-154, for example, never belonged to the Interflug fleet but to the government squadron. A DDR registration alone therefore does not automatically mean a scheduled flight. How to recognize government aircraft today is shown in the guide Spotting government aircraft.

Hub and routes

The heart of Interflug beat in Schönefeld. From there flights went to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but also to Western cities such as Vienna, Amsterdam or, from 1979, Athens. Interflug operated the Amsterdam route together with KLM; the flights to the Netherlands had to take a detour via Denmark. In addition there were charter flights sold by tour operators and travel agencies in West Berlin and the Federal Republic – an important source of hard currency.

On long-haul routes, from around the mid-1970s the airline flew to Havana, Hanoi and Maputo, among others, to Singapore from 1988 and to Beijing and Bangkok from 1989. At home, the airports of Leipzig/Halle with its trade fair traffic, Dresden and Erfurt played a role. From August 11, 1989 Interflug flew between Leipzig and Düsseldorf, and in 1990 connections from Dresden to Cologne and Hamburg were added.

The end: wind-down in 1991

With the fall of the Wall, Interflug lost its monopoly and its state backing. In 1990 ticket revenue covered only about half of the costs. Lufthansa initially wanted to get in: in spring 1990 a 26 percent stake was under discussion, and in early July it was even ready for a complete takeover. The Federal Cartel Office rejected the merger at the end of July 1990.

Lufthansa built up its own offering out of Berlin and in the new federal states, the A310s went to the Luftwaffe, and many Soviet aircraft found no buyers. How the end of Interflug compares with other collapses is put in context in the feature on major airline bankruptcies in Europe. A later Berlin airline with a completely different background, incidentally, was Air Berlin – it originated in the western part of the city as a US company.

Interflug in everyday spotting today

In air traffic you will no longer see Interflug. Instead, the airline is surprisingly present in eastern Germany – on the ground. The best-known aircraft is the Il-62 “Lady Agnes” (ex DDR-SEG) at Stölln/Rhinow airfield in the Havelland. On October 23, 1989 captain Heinz-Dieter Kallbach set it down on the grass runway of only about 860 meters; the landing made it into the Guinness Book of Records. It is named after Agnes, the wife of aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, and today it houses the exhibition “Unterwegs mit der Interflug” (“Traveling with Interflug”).

Far to the west, the Flugausstellung Hermeskeil (aviation exhibition) shows an Il-18 (DDR-STH) and a Tu-134A (DDR-SCK) from the Interflug fleet. Which other collections are worth visiting is covered in the overview Aviation museums in Germany, and how to identify vintage aircraft with confidence is explained in Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky.

If you want to connect the places of Interflug history with current traffic, you will find good vantage points at the observation deck at Berlin Airport and the observation deck at Leipzig/Halle Airport. With Planetrack you see weather, wind and active runways at such spots and plan the best light with the sun position planner.

Common mix-ups

• Treating Interflug and the East German Lufthansa as the same – the GDR’s Deutsche Lufthansa flew from 1955, and Interflug only took over all operations in 1963.
• Taking every GDR Il-62 for a scheduled airliner – the state leadership also used the type as a government aircraft.
• Taking the A310 for a Lufthansa aircraft – the three Interflug A310s flew in Interflug colors and later went to the Luftwaffe.
• Taking DM- and DDR- for different countries – both prefixes belonged to the GDR, and the change took place in 1981.
• Equating Schönefeld with today’s BER – the BER is on the same site but is a new airport.
• Confusing Interflug with Air Berlin – Air Berlin originated in the western part of the city and had nothing to do with the GDR airline.

Conclusion

Interflug was more than an airline: it was the GDR’s gateway to the world, operated with Il-18s, Tu-134s and Il-62s and, in the end, even with Airbus A310s. For spotters it lives on in registrations, old photos and museum aircraft. If you note DM- and DDR- prefixes, registration series and types cleanly, you turn a museum visit or an archive find into a real logbook entry.