WDL Aviation

WDL Aviation is one of those airlines that many spotters saw for years without consciously noticing the name. The departure board said Air Berlin, Germanwings, easyJet or British Airways – but the flight was operated by a four-engine BAe 146 from Cologne. Today the company is called German Airways and flies the Embraer E190. This page tells the story of WDL, shows you how to recognize its aircraft in old photos and explains why the airline is so instructive for understanding wet lease.

WDL Aviation at a glance

WDL Aviation was a Cologne wet-lease and charter airline based at Cologne Bonn Airport. The name is historic: since autumn 2019 the company has operated as German Airways, in 2020 the ICAO code changed, and by spring 2021 the legal renaming was done as well. Anyone who sees German Airways’ Embraer jets today is therefore looking at the direct successor – more on the page about German Airways.

The business model stayed essentially the same for decades. WDL sold hardly any tickets of its own but provided other airlines with aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. This form of leasing is called ACMI or wet lease. The customer puts its flight number on it, sells the tickets and takes on the load-factor risk; WDL supplied the flight operation. How this works in detail is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

For spotters, exactly this makes WDL so interesting. One aircraft, many customers, changing stickers – and behind it a small operator you can only identify reliably by the registration or the callsign.

From advertising flights in the Ruhr area to an airline

The story does not begin in Cologne but in the Ruhr area. Theodor Wüllenkemper, born in 1925 and an enthusiastic glider pilot as a teenager, was not allowed to fly after the war at first. When the Federal Republic allowed its own aviation again in 1955, he applied for a license – and received it on July 29, 1955. That is how the Westdeutsche Luftwerbung (“West German Aerial Advertising”), or WDL for short, came into being at Essen-Mülheim airfield. According to today’s German Airways, it was the second airline in the Federal Republic with an operating license after Lufthansa.

The name gives away the start: banner towing and advertising flights. Soon training flights, agricultural and aerial photography flights, connections to the North Sea islands and cargo transport were added. In 1972 airships for advertising flights were added. That division lives on today as the independent WDL Luftschiffgesellschaft in Mülheim, separate from the airline. If you are interested in the great role models, the history of the zeppelins provides the right background.

In 1974 WDL Flugdienst was created as an offshoot, and charter operations moved to Cologne/Bonn. That began the path toward an independent airline. In 1991 the parent company was restructured as the WDL Group, and the Cologne flight operation received the name WDL Aviation; the airship division became a separate group subsidiary.

The fleet through the years

Over the decades WDL Aviation flew a surprising number of types. The key milestones at a glance:

Type	Period	Use	Spotter note
Fokker F27 Friendship	until 2011	Cargo, including for TNT, UPS and Farnair	High-wing turboprop, a classic of night cargo
Learjet	at times	Air ambulance and special flights	Two aircraft for medical transport
Airbus A320-200	early 1990s	leased	Short episode, barely documented
BAe 146	1990s to 2019	Wet lease, charter, cargo	Eight aircraft in total
Embraer E190	from March 2019	Wet lease	Used aircraft, today at German Airways

The exact periods of service of the early types are only roughly documented in the sources. What is clear: the Fokker era ended in 2011. After that WDL was a pure BAe 146 operator – and for a few years one of the last places in Germany where you could regularly see the four-engine jet.

The BAe 146: the trademark

The British BAe 146 was made for WDL. It copes with short runways, was quiet for its time and can be used as a passenger as well as a freight aircraft. WDL used both variants, and the exact subtypes changed over the years. The pages on the BAe 146-200 and the BAe 146-300 introduce the type itself; the manufacturer was today’s BAE Systems.

In 2018, under Zeitfracht, WDL even bought additional BAe 146 freighters in the quiet QT version in order to return to the cargo business. At the same time the aircraft were already about 30 years old on average, and their replacement by Embraer jets had been decided. In November 2019 Zeitfracht announced it would hand over the last three BAe 146s to Pionair Australia – a charter and wet-lease specialist – by the end of the year. That ended the BAe 146 era at WDL. According to the company chronicle, WDL had operated eight BAe 146s in total.

Who WDL flew for

Wet lease means the operator is invisible and the customer takes the front seat. At WDL the customer list was long. With the BAe 146 the airline flew for Air Berlin, Flybe, Germanwings, KLM and SAS, among others. Regardless of aircraft type, shuttle flights for Airbus between the plants in Toulouse, Hamburg-Finkenwerder and Bristol-Filton were also on the order book.

In the last BAe 146 years, two customers are especially well documented:

• easyJet: Until the end of the 2018 summer season, WDL BAe 146s flew for the British low-cost carrier. After that easyJet used only its own jets.
• British Airways: In 2019 WDL flew for BA, including from London City Airport, whose steep approach suited the BAe 146.

The first Embraer jets brought new customers. In autumn 2019 an E190 flew for LOT out of Tallinn. In November 2019 the airline reported a major order from Sweden: Braathens Regional wanted to deploy five E190s from March 2020 for several years. Shortly after the planned start, the pandemic caused air traffic across Europe to collapse.

The 2019 Edinburgh incident

One event made WDL suddenly famous in spring 2019. On March 25, the BAe 146 D-AMGL was supposed to fly as British Airways flight BA3271 from London to Düsseldorf. The crew landed in Edinburgh instead. According to media reports, it had apparently received the previous day’s flight plan again, when the aircraft had flown from London City to Edinburgh. About two and a half hours later it continued to Düsseldorf.

For the passengers it was annoying, for aviation fans a lesson: a wet-lease operator works with the customer’s systems and plans. If something goes wrong at this interface, it reflects on the customer, even though the customer’s own crews were not involved at all.

Zeitfracht and the switch to German Airways

As of October 1, 2017, the Berlin-based Zeitfracht Group took over WDL Aviation. That began a rapid transformation:

The sister company Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter had been bought by Zeitfracht from Lufthansa in early 2019. It flew Dash 8-400s for Eurowings and ceased operations during the pandemic. Today’s German Airways is therefore clearly the former WDL – not the ex-LGW. How the Cologne company has developed since then you can read on the page about German Airways.

Codes and callsigns

• ICAO code WDL: appeared until 2020 in the air traffic control flight plan and in flight data, unless the flight was operated under the customer’s flight number.
• Since 2020: ICAO GER and callsign “GERMAN EAGLE” at German Airways.

Especially with wet-lease flights, it depends on the contract whether the operator’s or the customer’s callsign is used. An overview of the code system is in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

How to recognize WDL in photos

Since the airline has not flown under this name for years, today it is mainly about archive photos, logbooks and old spotter reports. These features help you:

Telling the BAe 146 from the Avro RJ is not always easy on old photos. Pay attention to the type designation in the register: through the registration you can assign every jet unambiguously. How registrations are structured is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations; tips on older types are under recognizing historic aircraft.

Traces of WDL today

WDL’s BAe 146s went to Australia at the end of 2019, and the Fokker freighters were retired as early as 2011. What remains is the company in Cologne with its Embraer jets. Cologne Bonn Airport is therefore where the search for traces starts: from the observation deck at Cologne/Bonn you may, with a bit of luck, see the successor’s E190s. More spotting tips around the airport are collected in the plane spotting guide for Cologne/Bonn.

Common mix-ups

• Equating the customer name with the operator – a BAe 146 with easyJet or Germanwings titles could come from WDL.
• Confusing WDL Aviation with WDL Luftschiffgesellschaft – same root, but separate companies.
• Mistaking German Airways for the ex-LGW – today’s German Airways is the former WDL.
• Equating the BAe 146 and the Avro RJ – the RJ is the modernized successor family.
• Mixing up callsigns WDL and GER – WDL stands for the time until 2020, GER for the time after.

Conclusion

WDL Aviation was never an airline whose name appeared on boarding passes – and yet it helped shape German charter aviation for decades. The arc stretches from advertising flights in the Ruhr area through Fokker freighters to one of the country’s last BAe 146 fleets. Today the company lives on as German Airways with the Embraer E190. If you compare old photos against registrations and callsigns, you will discover WDL in many places where only the customer was noted.