LTU International Airways, which has been a division of Air Berlin PLC since August 2007, offering frequent scheduled flights on long and medium-haul routes, will finally be fully integrated under Air Berlin's AOC today (1 April 2011). The airline was founded as Lufttransport-Union in February 1955 by Englishman Bernard Dromgoole. On 2 October 1955, Duisburg-based construction company Conle acquired the business outright. Charter services were launched on 2 March 1956, when the company's sole Vickers Viking carried 36 passengers from Frankfurt to Sicily, with an unscheduled stop in Marseille to effect repairs. LTU grew to become Germany's largest charter airline in the 1970s, and the first of its kind to operate widebody aircraft with the arrival of the first Lockeed TriStar in 1973. By the mid 1980s eleven TriStars were in service and in later years MD-11s and A330s were to follow. LTU introduced scheduled services to the United States in 1990. The company was unique among German carriers in offering passengers a universal two-class system, even in the low-fare sector. The Swiss SAir Group became the a major shareholder in 1998, returning to German control two years later, when the REWE group took over the LTU Touristik travel group and with it 40 per cent of LTU's airline operations. During 2006, investment company, Intro Verwaltungs acquired a 76 per cent shareholding, before Air Berlin agreed to acquire the carrier outright on 27 March 2007.
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Fri, Apr 1 2011 10:16 AM
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