Hapag-Lloyd was a German airline founded in the early 70s. In 2005, it was renamed Hapagfly, before being merged with Hapag-Lloyd Express in 2007. The new airline is called TUIfly.
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Hapag-Lloyd was founded in July 1972, as subsidiary of the German shipping group with the same name. It was supposed to fly cruise passengers to their ports of departure.
Flight operations started on March 30, 1973, in a Boeing 727 from Hamburg to Ibiza.
In January 1979, Bavaria Germanair was purchased. Also, the first Airbus, an A300, joined the fleet in April.
In the following decades, several aircraft were added. The flight network was extended, regular scheduled flights were added. Some destinations are North Africa, the Middle East the Canary Islands and other touristic islands.
In 1997, the airline and its mother company became part of the TUI travel company. As a consequence, in 2005, all aircraft received a new livery and the TUI logo. The airline was renamed Hapagfly. During restructuring several Airbuses were sold to other airlines and replaced by Boeing 737s.
On January 15, 2007, Hapagfly was merged with another TUI subsidiary, Hapag-Lloyd Express, forming the new TUIfly. Before this merger Hapagfly had owned 36 Boeing 737s.
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