PrivatAir

If you stood at the fence in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf or Geneva between 2002 and 2018, you know the sight: a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A319, white with a red tail but without a large airline title – and yet with a Lufthansa flight number in the schedule. That was PrivatAir. The Geneva company flew business-only jets for major airlines and was one of the most unusual airlines in Europe. This page shows you how a corporate fleet became a premium wet-lease airline, which aircraft it used and how to reliably recognize PrivatAir in old photos.

PrivatAir at a glance

PrivatAir was a Swiss airline based in Meyrin near Geneva that existed from 1977 to 2018. It didn’t fit any classic category: On the one hand, it operated business aircraft, organized VIP charters and looked after aircraft of private owners. On the other hand, it flew scheduled flights for many years – though almost never under its own name, but on behalf of major network airlines.

This model is called wet lease: An airline rents an aircraft including crew, maintenance and insurance and sells the seats under its own flight number. What exactly that means is explained in the guide Wet lease explained. PrivatAir specialized in the premium variant: jets with a few generous seats and business class only.

The home base was Geneva Airport. The actual operating locations depended on the contracts, though – for Lufthansa these were mainly Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. Alongside the Swiss company, there was the subsidiary PrivatAir GmbH in Düsseldorf with its own German air operator certificate and aircraft with D- registrations.

The history in stages

PrivatAir’s roots lie not in the airline business but in an entrepreneurial family. The Greek business family Latsis, known from shipping, oil and banking, had its own flight operation set up for its group of companies in 1977: Petrolair. Two years later, the company began flying with a Boeing 737-200 – even then for business travel.

The turning point was the airline license of 1995. From then on, PrivatAir was no longer just a family’s house airline but offered aircraft and crews to others as well. That is how the company established itself as a wet-lease provider in the upscale segment – a small niche between business aviation and scheduled service.

Codes and callsigns

PrivatAir worked with several companies and therefore with several codes. For your logbook this matters:

• IATA code PV: belonged to the Swiss Privatair SA. It rarely appeared in bookings, because most scheduled flights ran under the customers’ flight numbers.
• ICAO code PTI, callsign “PRIVATAIR”: used by the Swiss company with air traffic control.
• ICAO code PTG, callsign “PRIVATJET”: stood for the German PrivatAir GmbH in Düsseldorf.

For wet-lease flights, the rule is: The flight number shows the seller, the ICAO code and registration show who is really flying. An LH flight from Frankfurt to Pune was therefore often really a PrivatAir flight – recognizable by the callsign and the red-and-white aircraft at the gate.

Business-only: the flights for Lufthansa

The best-known episode begins in June 2002. On behalf of Lufthansa, PrivatAir started a nonstop service from Düsseldorf to Newark near New York. On board there was business class only. The route is considered in the trade press to be the first transatlantic flight to take off with a business-class cabin only – years before other airlines tried similar concepts.

At launch, PrivatAir used a Boeing Business Jet, and from 2003 specially fitted long-range Airbus A319s with around 48 business seats joined. In the same year, the offering grew with further business-only services for Lufthansa to the US. The Düsseldorf service ran until June 2008.

After that, the focus shifted to Frankfurt. For Lufthansa, PrivatAir served a whole series of routes in the following years on which a large jet wasn’t worthwhile but business travelers expected plenty of comfort:

Route	Period (as far as documented)	Note
Düsseldorf – Newark	June 2002 to June 2008	First business-only service across the Atlantic
Munich – Tel Aviv	around 2009	Discontinued again some years before 2015
Frankfurt – Bahrain/Dammam	from about 2009	Dammam ended in late October 2015
Frankfurt – Nairobi	until August 31, 2016	East Africa with a business jet
Frankfurt – Pune	until mid-2018	Last big Lufthansa contract
Other destinations	at times	incl. Accra, Libreville, Pointe-Noire and Khartoum

For spotters in Frankfurt, that was a stroke of luck. Among Lufthansa’s crane-tailed jets, a business jet in PrivatAir looks regularly appeared – easy to overlook if you plan only by flight numbers. If you want to place old Düsseldorf shots today, the plane spotting guide to Düsseldorf has the classic locations. The plane spotting guide to Frankfurt helps you find today’s locations at Germany’s biggest hub. How Lufthansa organizes its subsidiaries and partners is shown on the page about the Lufthansa Group.

Swiss, KLM, SAS and other customers

Lufthansa was the most important but not the only customer. From January 2005, PrivatAir flew for Swiss between Zurich and Newark, under the flight numbers LX 18 and LX 19. A Boeing Business Jet based on the 737-800 with an all-business-class cabin was used; on the route it replaced a Swiss Airbus A330. For a Swiss company, that was a home game: The service brought PrivatAir regularly to Zurich – spotter tips for that are in the plane spotting guide to Zurich.

For KLM, PrivatAir flew from 2005 to 2011 between Amsterdam Schiphol and Houston, in addition to KLM’s own flight. The Boeing Business Jet used had 44 seats, all in business class. In 2011, KLM took the route back entirely with its own widebody equipment.

From March 2016 to October 2017, PrivatAir provided a Boeing 737 for SAS on the Copenhagen–Boston route. For a narrowbody aircraft, an Atlantic flight of that length is remarkable – exactly what the business jets with auxiliary tanks were built for. From 2017, PrivatAir also flew on a wet-lease basis for TUIfly and Eurowings.

Further contracts came from industry and from the Gulf:

• Airbus: From 2003 to 2008, PrivatAir shuttled employees between the plants in Hamburg-Finkenwerder and Toulouse. How to photograph the plant today is covered in the guide Spotting at Airbus Finkenwerder.
• Saudia: For the Saudi state airline Saudia, PrivatAir flew domestic routes. Most recently, the Swiss company operated three A319s for the VIP division Saudia Private Aviation.
• ECAir: PrivatAir flew for the airline from the Republic of the Congo until October 2016, when ECAir ceased operations.

PrivatAir’s fleet

The fleet changed with the contracts. The following table summarizes the documented types across the company’s entire history – it shows no cutoff date.

Type	At PrivatAir	Role
Boeing 737-200	from 1979	Petrolair’s first aircraft
Boeing 757-200	from 1989	More space and range for VIP charter
Boeing 767-300ER	at times, around 2007	VIP charter on long-haul
Airbus A319	from 2003	Airbus factory shuttle, Lufthansa routes, most recently Saudia
Boeing BBJ based on the 737-700	from 2002	Business-only for Lufthansa, KLM and others
BBJ2 or 737-800	from the 2000s	Longer cabin, more seats, e.g. for Swiss

Added to these were business aircraft such as the Gulfstream IV. How to tell the 757 and 767 apart in old photos is shown in the guide Telling the Boeing 757 and 767 apart, and for the A319, Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart reliably helps. In 2012, PrivatAir also signed an order for Bombardier CSeries – today the Airbus A220-100. No aircraft was delivered to PrivatAir.

Shortly before the end, according to the industry service ch-aviation, the fleet still comprised three A319s that flew for Saudia Private Aviation and had just been transferred to the Swiss operating certificate, plus two 737-700 BBJs that were parked after the loss of the German license.

How to recognize PrivatAir

PrivatAir’s livery was understated and yet unmistakable. A white fuselage, a red section around the nose directly under the cockpit windows and a red vertical stabilizer with four white squares that together resemble a cross. The “PrivatAir” title was small and sat near the forward door – very much in the style of a business jet, not a scheduled airline.

Interesting: Photos often show the jets in this own look even on Lufthansa flights. A red tail with squares at a Lufthansa gate is therefore a strong hint of PrivatAir – but the attribution only becomes certain with registration and date.

For registrations, the guide to Swiss HB- registrations helps. And because the BBJ and the scheduled 737 look very similar on the outside, Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart is worth a look: PrivatAir’s business jets were based on the Next Generation.

The end in 2018

The end came in several steps. In November 2016, the investment company SilverArrow Capital had taken over the 51 percent majority. New customers such as SAS, TUIfly and Eurowings brought work, but the most important pillar was crumbling: The cooperation with Lufthansa on the Frankfurt–Pune route ended in mid-2018, and in the fall Lufthansa resumed the service with its own equipment.

In October 2018, the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce published a Geneva court ruling stating that bankruptcy proceedings had been opened against PrivatAir. PrivatAir spoke of an error, and the court reversed the ruling shortly afterward. But the damage was done: At the end of October, the German Federal Aviation Office withdrew the air operator certificate of the German subsidiary.

On December 5, 2018, the Swiss parent company and the German subsidiary filed for insolvency. PrivatAir justified the step with a series of events that had severely impaired the company’s business prospects. That ended, after a good 40 years, one of Switzerland’s most unusual airlines. How PrivatAir fits into the series of big failures is shown in the overview Airline insolvencies in Europe.

PrivatAir in the archive: tips for spotters

You can no longer photograph PrivatAir today. The airline remains interesting anyway – for your archive and for tracing former aircraft. Former PrivatAir jets may keep flying with other operators, usually with a new livery and often a new registration.

Geneva remains a good place for business jets of all kinds. From the observation deck at Geneva Airport, you see the business aviation aprons, and the plane spotting guide to Geneva shows you further locations. In Düsseldorf, where the business-only story began, the observation deck at Düsseldorf Airport offers a good overview. And how to place today’s VIP and corporate jets is explained in the guide Spotting business jets.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing PrivatAir with Swiss or Swissair – the cross motif on the red tail recalls Switzerland but belongs to PrivatAir. Swissair and Swiss had their own, larger-scale designs.
• Thinking every LH flight is Lufthansa – on some routes PrivatAir flew on behalf, with its own aircraft and its own crew.
• Logging a BBJ as a normal 737-700 – the business jet is a version of its own with longer range and a different cabin.
• Swiss and German companies treated as one – HB- registrations and ICAO PTI belong to Privatair SA, D- registrations and PTG to PrivatAir GmbH.
• Taking the A220 order for a fleet – PrivatAir never received a CSeries or A220.

Conclusion

PrivatAir was an airline that was easy to overlook – and exciting for precisely that reason. From a family’s corporate flight department it became a specialist in business-only flights, flying for Lufthansa, Swiss, KLM and SAS across the Atlantic, the Middle East and Africa. With the loss of the big contracts and the license withdrawal in Germany, the story ended in December 2018. What remains are red-and-white jets in old photos that you can attribute cleanly with registration and date.