FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1987
1987 - 0230.PDF
stitching the travel tapestry o ^ur competitors are the Mercedes and the BMW" says Peter Orlovius, who drives a large Mercedes with considerable elan along Germany's speed-unlimited autobahns. Orlovius is managing director of Frankfurt-headquartered regional airline DLT (Deutsche Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH), which is not really a regional airline at all because it is not confined to a region. DLT bills itself as Partner of Lufthansa, but Lufthansa does not own it or run it; not directly anyway. It is this relationship with the German national carrier, though, which is the key to everything DLT does, and how it does it. DLT's roots go back to 1958 and an air- taxi firm called OLT. In 1970 the carrier's present majority shareholder, massive Frankfurt-based German holding company AGIV, took an OLT share; but it was not until 1978 that DLT received its DLT is fundamentally different from the classic commuter airline; that is because its network is not based on hubs and feeder work. David Learmount discovers how it works. Pictures by Janice Lowe. present name and the official English title of German Commuter Airlines. That same year Lufthansa bought its first DLT stock by contributing 26 per cent towards the airline's DM6 million capital. Today's ownership status, DM40 million capital with AGIV share 60 per cent and Lufthansa share 40 per cent, was achieved two years ago. You would think that, with a declared 38 and obvious close relationship like this between the two airlines, DLT would be set up to feed Lufthansa after the Ameri can style. It is not. Only 3 per cent of DLT's traffic is feeder work, on only two routes, both of which converge on Frank furt. Actually what DLT does is the work which Lufthansa does not want. Lufthansa wanted, about ten years ago, to have some influence in the growing area of commuter air transport. The airline's board met on the subject and decided that it would be inadvisable to set up an in- house company, or a daughter company like Condor, because it would not survive in its field with employees in the same unions demanding the same rates and • conditions as LH employees. So the national airline elected to take a major share in a company that already existed and was flying in the direction Lufthansa wanted it to go. Hence the 1978 LH deci sion to take its 26 per cent DLT share, but FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 25 April 1987
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
