Interflug: East Germany’s airline and its fleet

It was the airline of a state that has not existed since 1990, and yet its name still comes up in spotter conversations: Interflug, the airline of East Germany (the GDR). For roughly three decades its Ilyushins and Tupolevs flew from Berlin-Schönefeld to Moscow, Havana, Hanoi or Athens. At the end even a Western widebody jet joined the fleet. This article tells Interflug’s story from the name dispute to the wind-down, introduces the fleet and shows you where you can still find genuine Interflug aircraft today.

Interflug in brief

Interflug was the state-owned and, from 1963, only airline of East Germany. It was founded in September 1958, had its headquarters and home airport in Berlin-Schönefeld and ceased flight operations on April 30, 1991. The airline carried the IATA code IF and the ICAO code IFL, and on the radio it called itself INTERFLUG. Its profile was broader than that of a typical airline: besides scheduled and charter traffic, crop spraying, aerial photography, geophysical surveying and helicopter assembly flights were part of the company.

Backstory: East Germany’s Lufthansa

Interflug’s roots lie in an airline that is almost forgotten today. In April 1955 the GDR’s Council of Ministers decided to build an airline of its own. It was given the name Deutsche Lufthansa – the same name that the newly founded West German company also carried. On July 30, 1955 the first Ilyushin Il-14 landed at Schönefeld, and in September the first official flight followed, carrying a government delegation to Moscow. From February 1956 the first route connected Berlin with Warsaw.

The problem was the name. West Germany’s Lufthansa had acquired the name and trademark rights of the prewar Lufthansa and took legal action against their use in the East. Abroad, seizures and disputes loomed at every airport where both companies turned up. The GDR responded in September 1958 with a substitute company: Interflug, at first intended mainly for charter flights, for example to the Leipzig Trade Fair.

For five years both companies existed side by side. In summer 1963 the SED leadership (the GDR’s ruling party) decided to dissolve the East German Lufthansa. On September 1, 1963, aircraft, airfields and route rights passed to Interflug – from then on it was the country’s only airline. How tangled German aviation was overall during the period of division is also shown by the history of the Berlin Airlift and of Tempelhof Airport.

The route network: from Moscow to Havana

Domestically, scheduled service played only a minor role. Interflug flew from Berlin to Erfurt, Leipzig, Dresden, Heringsdorf and Barth, among others, but domestic traffic lost importance and was discontinued entirely in 1980. Erfurt, Leipzig and Dresden remained in operation as international airports – today you know them as Erfurt-Weimar Airport, Leipzig/Halle Airport and Dresden Airport.

The backbone was the international network. In the beginning there were destinations in the Eastern Bloc such as Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Sofia, plus Belgrade and Tirana. Later destinations in the West were added, such as Athens from 1979, Scandinavia, Austria and Belgium. With the Il-62, Interflug became a long-haul airline and flew to Havana, Hanoi, further destinations in Asia and several African capitals, among others.

A curiosity of the division: West Berliners could drive in transit to Schönefeld through a border crossing of their own at Waltersdorfer Chaussee, and from 1980 a bus shuttled to the airport from there. Because fares were well below those of Western airlines, Interflug was a cheap alternative to flights from Tegel for many. Only in August 1989, a few months before the fall of the Wall, did Interflug get permission for a route between Leipzig and Düsseldorf – but with a detour via Czechoslovakia, because the inner-German border was not allowed to be crossed directly in flight.

In 1983, according to company figures, Interflug carried around 1.3 million passengers. Economically, though, the airline was never self-supporting: even in early 1990, ticket revenue covered only about half of the costs, according to the management of the time.

The fleet: Ilyushin, Tupolev and one Airbus

For spotters the fleet is the most exciting part of the story. Interflug flew almost exclusively types from the Soviet Union – with one remarkable exception at the end. An overview of the whole family of these aircraft is given in the article Soviet airliners.

Type	Role at Interflug	Period (approx.)	Special feature
Ilyushin Il-14	first scheduled aircraft, short and medium haul	from 1955 to the end of the 1960s	partly built under license in East Germany
Ilyushin Il-18	turboprop workhorse in European traffic	from 1960/61 to 1991	kept flying after reunification with Berline
Antonov An-24	regional and domestic traffic	about 1966 to the mid-1970s	only a small number
Tupolev Tu-134	first jet, European network	1968/69 to 1991	flew the last scheduled flight
Ilyushin Il-62	long haul and government flights	1970 to 1991	rear-mounted engines, the Interflug symbol par excellence
Airbus A310	long haul	1989 to 1991	three aircraft from the West

Il-14 and Il-18: the propeller years

The Ilyushin Il-14 was the first type of the East German Lufthansa; some aircraft were built under license in Dresden. From 1960/61 the four-engine Ilyushin Il-18 was added. The turboprop flew to the very end: after the wind-down, former Interflug employees took over five Il-18s and flew cargo and charter flights from Schönefeld as Berline, until this company also went insolvent in 1994. For regional traffic, Interflug also used some Antonov An-24s in the 1960s.

Tu-134 and Il-62: the jet age

At the end of the 1960s the jet age began at Interflug with the Tupolev Tu-134. The twin-engine jet with engines at the rear and the glazed navigator’s station in the nose was responsible mainly for the European network. In 1970 the Ilyushin Il-62 followed, the four-engine long-haul jet with engines mounted in pairs at the rear. The Il-62s flew the long routes and were also used for state and government flights.

Not in its own fleet, but at times traveling in Interflug colors: some government aircraft, such as Tupolev Tu-154s of the East German air force, wore the civil paint scheme but did not belong to Interflug. For spotter archives this distinction is still a small trap today.

The Airbus A310: the Western jet from the East

The biggest surprise came at the very end. After Western export control (CoCom) had taken civil airliners off its restricted list, the then Airbus supervisory board chairman Franz Josef Strauß brokered a deal together with a banking consortium: Interflug received three Airbus A310s, delivered in 1989. The crews were trained in France and West Germany, and Lufthansa Technik took over maintenance. With the longer range, Interflug could reach Cuba nonstop, where the Il-62 had still needed a fuel stop at Gander in Canada.

The A310 did not stay long in East Berlin service. After the wind-down, in 1991 the Federal Ministry of Defense’s flight readiness unit took over all three aircraft. The former DDR-ABC flew there as 10+23, was retired in 2021 and has stood in the Serengeti Park Hodenhagen since autumn 2025. How the type later developed into a tanker and transport aircraft is shown in the profile of the Airbus A310 MRTT.

More than an airline: crop spraying and aerial photography

A part of Interflug that was hardly known in the West was crop-spraying aviation (Agrarflug). As early as 1957 the commercial flight division of the East German Lufthansa used the Czechoslovak agricultural aircraft L-60 Brigadyr; in 1963 the division passed to Interflug. From 1967 the Z-37 Čmelák was added in large numbers. In Leipzig-Mockau an agricultural flying school was set up the same year, which trained more than 400 pilots until 1990. At the end of the 1980s about 280 aircraft were in agricultural use.

In addition, Interflug ran a division for aerial photography, geophysical survey flights and crane work with helicopters. One example is the electrification of lines of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (East Germany’s state railway), in which helicopters took over assembly work around 1981, often while trains kept running. In the 1980s Let L-410s were also added, which did not fly in scheduled service.

The serious accidents

Interflug’s history also includes several serious accidents. The most devastating were:

• August 14, 1972, Königs Wusterhausen: After a fire in the rear section, the Il-62 DM-SEA crashed shortly after takeoff. All 156 people on board were killed – to this day the deadliest air disaster on German soil.
• 1975, approach to Leipzig: The Tu-134 DM-SCD struck a radio antenna on approach and crashed, and more than 20 people died.
• 1979, Luanda (Angola): The Il-18 DM-STL crashed after takeoff, and all ten occupants died.
• 1989, Berlin-Schönefeld: The Il-62 DDR-SEW left the runway during a rejected takeoff and caught fire. Around 20 occupants and also people on the ground were killed.

A hard landing of a Tu-134 at Schönefeld in 1977 ended more lightly: the aircraft was destroyed, but all occupants survived. How air traffic control and accident investigation have developed over the decades is shown in the history of air traffic control.

Reunification and wind-down

With the fall of the Wall, everything changed for Interflug. In April 1990 the transport ministers of both German states announced a 26 percent stake for Lufthansa; in July 1990 the Lufthansa board even signaled readiness for a full takeover. But the Federal Cartel Office rejected the merger at the end of July 1990. Losses rose, in autumn 1990 to around one million Deutsche marks per week.

No viable buyer was found. On February 7, 1991, the Treuhandanstalt (the agency privatizing East German state assets) ordered liquidation. The last scheduled flight went on April 30, 1991 with the Tu-134 D-AOBC from Vienna to Berlin-Schönefeld. Of around 8,000 employees, Lufthansa took on about 1,000, including 450 from engineering. Interflug thus shares the fate of many once-great names described in the article Major airline failures in Europe – even if here it was politics rather than the market that sealed the end. The brand name was acquired years later by a Hamburg company; a charter project under the name failed in 2005 with an insolvency.

The home airport lived on: Schönefeld was expanded after reunification and is now part of Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Where Il-62s and Tu-134s once stood, you now spot modern twinjets from the observation deck at BER. Tips for the region are in the guide Plane spotting at BER.

Interflug today: traces for spotters

Flying Interflug aircraft no longer exist, but some aircraft have survived. The most famous is the Il-62 “Lady Agnes” at Stölln/Rhinow airfield in Brandenburg. On October 23, 1989, Captain Heinz-Dieter Kallbach landed DDR-SEG on the grass runway of only about 900 meters – a feat of airmanship still talked about today. The aircraft was named after Agnes, wife of Otto Lilienthal, who died in a crash nearby at the Gollenberg in 1896. Today the aircraft serves as a museum and registry office.

More Il-62s stand in Leipzig and in Merseburg, there in the aviation and technology museum. If you are generally interested in East German aviation, you will find further pieces from that time in the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin and the Cottbus Airfield Museum. Access, opening hours and use of the exhibits change occasionally – check this directly with the operator before visiting.

Conclusion

Interflug began as a legal stopgap and became the GDR’s calling card in the sky. With the Il-18, Tu-134 and Il-62 it connected East Berlin with Moscow, Havana and Hanoi, plus crop-spraying and work flights at home. The Airbus A310 came in 1989 too late to change the airline: after the Cartel Office veto and the Treuhand decision, flight operations ended in April 1991. A profile of the airline is also available under Interflug.