Balair

Hardly any name runs as long through Swiss aviation history as Balair. The Basel company was one of the two founders of Swissair in 1931, came back in 1953, became a charter airline from 1957, took vacationers to far-off places with the DC-8 and DC-10, flew relief supplies for the Red Cross into crisis regions and finally disappeared in fall 2001 with the end of Swissair. This page shows you Balair’s different lives, its fleet, how to recognize its jets in old photos and how to tell it apart from CTA, Crossair and Belair.

Balair at a glance

Balair was a Swiss airline from Basel that flew in several attempts between 1925 and 2001. The name stands for Basler Luftverkehrs AG and alludes to “Bâle,” the French name of the city. Strictly speaking, there was not one Balair but several companies under this name – and each had a slightly different role.

The first Balair was a scheduled airline in the 1920s that served a small network in central Europe from Basel and was absorbed into Swissair in 1931. The second Balair was re-founded in 1953 and became the charter, leisure and relief flight specialist of the Swissair group. In 1993, it merged with Geneva-based CTA to form BalairCTA. And from 1997 to 2001, a new Balair flew once more as a Swissair subsidiary, this time exclusively for the tour operator Hotelplan.

What all phases share is the close link to Basel and to Swissair. Its home was first the Basel airfield Sternenfeld, later EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg. From 1993, flight operations were based at Zurich Airport, with the registered office in Geneva.

The history in stages

Balair’s history can be divided into four chapters: the Basel scheduled-service pioneer, the postwar charter and relief flight airline, the short BalairCTA phase and the revival as Hotelplan’s carrier.

The Basel pioneer (1925–1931)

The first Balair came into being at a time when air travel was an adventure with subsidies. It flew only in the summer half-year, financed mainly by federal contributions and mail transport. In its good five years of operation, Balair carried over 18,000 passengers as well as about 320 tons of freight and a good 140 tons of mail, according to the company history. When the Great Depression came, the Air Office pushed for a merger: Balair and Zurich-based Ad Astra Aero became Swissair on January 1, 1931, headquartered in Zurich. Basel had thereby lost its own airline, but had laid the foundation for the later national carrier.

Charter, leisure and relief flights (1953–1993)

More than two decades later, the name came back. The new Balair was at first a service provider around Basel-Mulhouse Airport: flight training, maintenance and handling. In 1957, it entered the charter business with two Vickers Vikings. That began the role that shaped Balair for decades – as a leisure and contract airline that took the charter business off Swissair’s hands.

In winter, Balair also flew vacationers on long routes, such as to Mombasa, Rio de Janeiro, Colombo, New York or Los Angeles. In addition came numerous flights for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) into crisis regions and Fokker F27 missions on behalf of the UN. Economically, the model was not easy, though: the focus on long-haul brought Swissair little relief, and the company was considered not very efficient.

Balair’s fleet

Hardly any Swiss airline flew as many different types as Balair. Many aircraft came from Swissair or were swapped with it, and some flew only briefly. Exact numbers per type therefore differ by source – the table lists the types and their role.

Type	Era	Spotter note
Fokker F.II, F.III, F.VII	1925–1930	High-wings of the founding years
Vickers Viking	from 1957	First charter aircraft of the second Balair
Douglas DC-4	from 1959	Four-engine, taken over from Swissair
Douglas DC-6	1960s to early 1980s	Piston-engine classic, also on relief flights
Fokker F27 Friendship	from 1965	Turboprop for scheduled service on Swissair’s behalf and UN missions
Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter	late 1960s	Freighter, used in the Biafra airlift
Convair 990 Coronado	at times	One-off, leased from Swissair
Douglas DC-8	1970s/1980s	Partly taken over from Swissair
DC-9	1970s/1980s	Twinjet with rear-mounted engines
McDonnell Douglas DC-10	from 1979	DC-10-30 HB-IHK, long-haul workhorse
Airbus A310	from 1986	A310-300, long-haul widebody jet
MD-80 family	from the mid-1980s	MD-82, MD-83 and MD-87
Boeing 757-200	1997–2001	Two examples, later to Belair
Boeing 767-300	1997–2001	Two examples for long-haul

The propeller years from 1957 are typical postwar charter aviation: the Viking, DC-4 and DC-6 took vacationers and freight south. The DC-6 HB-IBS is considered the last four-engine propeller aircraft in Swiss scheduled and charter service; it later went to Canada. What the ancestors of this aircraft family looked like is shown in the article on the Douglas DC-3.

In the 1970s, the jet era began on a large scale: the DC-9 was joined by DC-8s for long-haul, later the DC-10. In 1979, the fleet consisted of one DC-6, one DC-9, two DC-8s and one DC-10 with the registration HB-IHK. From 1982, Balair then flew only jets. Most of these types come from McDonnell Douglas or Douglas – fitting for Swissair, which long relied on the same manufacturer.

In the 1980s, the next generation followed: from 1986, Balair flew the Airbus A310-300 on long-haul, and on short and medium-haul routes the MD-82, MD-83 and the shortened MD-87 were added, which suited leisure routes with smaller demand well.

The Balair of 1997 to 2001 was lean: two Boeing 757-200s for short and medium-haul routes, leased from Hotelplan, and two Boeing 767-300s for long-haul. How to tell the two Boeing types apart is explained in the guide Telling the Boeing 757 and 767 apart.

Relief flights and the Biafra airlift

A special chapter is the humanitarian missions. Balair regularly flew for the ICRC and other organizations into war and crisis regions. Best known is the Biafra airlift during the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s: for this, Balair used Boeing C-97s, among others, which brought relief supplies for church aid organizations and the ICRC at night to the unlit improvised Uli airstrip in southeastern Nigeria.

This mission was dangerous. On May 7, 1969, a Balair DC-6 (HB-IBT) on behalf of the ICRC crashed about eleven kilometers short of the runway, the four crew members were killed, and more than ten tons of relief supplies burned. Already on May 15, 1960, the Balair DC-4 HB-ILA, on a ferry flight in Sudan, had flown into a mountain after navigation errors, and all twelve occupants died.

CTA and the merger into BalairCTA

Swissair’s second charter subsidiary was CTA – Compagnie de Transport Aérien, based in Meyrin near Geneva. Swissair founded it in 1978 as a successor company after the Geneva charter company SATA went bankrupt. At first, CTA flew the Caravelle, later the MD-87, mainly to vacation destinations around the Mediterranean.

On January 1, 1993, Swissair merged both subsidiaries. The new BalairCTA had its registered office in Geneva, its accounting stayed in Basel, and flight operations moved to Zurich. The construction did not last long: after restructuring and layoffs, BalairCTA gave up its own charter business in 1995. Crossair took over the short-haul routes, and Swissair itself the long-haul.

Feature	Balair	CTA	BalairCTA
Period	1953–1993 (and 1925–1931)	1978–1993	1993–1995/1997
Origin	Basel	Geneva/Meyrin	Merger of both
Focus	Charter, long-haul, relief flights	Mediterranean charter	Charter from Zurich
Typical types	DC-8, DC-10, A310, MD-80	Caravelle, later MD-87	MD-80, A310

The last Balair (1997–2001)

At the end of 1997, the name appeared once more: the Swissair group started a new Balair as a charter subsidiary that flew exclusively for Hotelplan and its brands. With two 757s and two 767s, it served vacation destinations on short, medium and long-haul routes from Zurich.

When the Swissair group plunged into crisis in fall 2001, it was the end for Balair as well. The last Balair flight landed in Zurich on October 5, 2001. The 767s went back to the lessors. The two 757s and about 120 former Balair employees moved to the new Belair, which Hotelplan founded in October 2001 and which began flight operations on November 3, 2001. Belair later went to Air Berlin and ended in 2017.

In Swiss leisure flying, other names followed: Edelweiss Air is today the country’s best-known leisure airline and, like Swiss, belongs to the Lufthansa Group. Edelweiss is not a direct successor of Balair, though.

How to recognize Balair

You can no longer see Balair live – you meet it on slides, prints and in archives. These features help with identification:

• Registration: All Balair aircraft were registered in Switzerland and carry HB- on the tail. How the Swiss system works is explained in the article on Swiss HB- registrations.
• Titles: “Balair” or, from 1993, “BalairCTA” on the fuselage. The liveries often followed the Swissair design – the titles are therefore the most important clue.
• Type and time: Four-engine propeller aircraft point to the 1950s and 1960s, DC-8s and DC-10s to the 1970s and 1980s, a 757 or 767 to the years 1997 to 2001.
• Place: Basel, Zurich and Geneva as well as leisure airports and – in exceptional cases – runways in crisis regions.

Balair in everyday spotting today

The best places to look for traces are Zurich and Basel. At Zurich Airport, where Balair was last stationed, you will find two of the best-known spots in Observation deck B and the Butzenbüel; an overview is given in the guide Plane spotting in Zurich. If you are interested in Swiss aviation history as a whole, you can’t miss the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.

Common mix-ups

• Balair and Belair – Belair was the Hotelplan company from November 2001, not a Swissair subsidiary.
• Balair and Swissair – many aircraft moved between the two, the titles on the fuselage are decisive.
• CTA and SATA – SATA was the Geneva predecessor that went bankrupt; CTA was its successor company.
• BalairCTA and Crossair – Crossair did take over short-haul routes in 1995, but was an independent regional airline.
• The first and the second Balair – between 1931 and 1953 there was no Balair; Swissair flew the routes.

Conclusion

Balair is a piece of Swiss aviation history in several acts: Basel scheduled-service pioneer, co-founder of Swissair, charter and relief flight specialist with the DC-8 and DC-10, merger partner of CTA and lastly Hotelplan’s carrier with the 757 and 767. With the end of Swissair in fall 2001, the name disappeared as well. If you sort old photos, the HB- registration lets you record this airline’s history cleanly.