Frankfurt am Main — Germany’s most popular leisure airline celebrates its 60 year anniversary this year. On May 29, 1956, the first Condor plane took off in Frankfurt, Germany, formerly operating under the name Deutsche Flugdienst GmbH. Since then, Condor has made aviation history and has developed from a pioneer into the most popular leisure airline in Germany.
The year 2016 will be the main focus of this anniversary with celebrations and special events year round.Condor Airlines will also paint one of its aircraft in an anniversary special livery and update followers and fans on its anniversary page on the blogging platform, Tumblr (http://60years.condor.com). Fans and #AvGeeks can look forward to historical picture galleries, short videos, information on activities, competitions and reports from former passengers.
“In the last 60 years, Condor has grown to be a strong brand and has established itself firmly in the market”, said Ralf Teckentrup, chairman of Condor’s executive board. “Much has changed over the decades, but one thing has remained the same: we take people to the best holiday destinations. We now offer 75 dream destinations – considerably more than we offered in the 1950s.”
The airline‘s first flight in 1956 with a Vickers Viking was to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and Egypt. During the first year of operations, Mallorca and Tenerife were already included in the flight schedule.To satisfy the ever growing demand, Condor continuously increased the numbers of destinations thru the years. The next milestone followed in 1966, leading to the first long haul flights to Thailand, Sri Lanka, Kenya and the Dominican Republic.
The expansion of the route network will continue during the anniversary year. Four new Greek destinations – Araxos-Patras (GPA), Volos (VOL), Zakynthos (ZTH) and Kavala (KVA) as well as flights from Frankfurt to Austin, Texas will be added in June. Starting Summer 2016 weekly flights from Munich will be added to the following destinations: Halifax (YHZ), Canada; Windhoek (WDH), Namibia; Havana (HAV), Cuba as well as Zanzibar (ZNZ), Tanzania and Mombasa (MBA), Kenya.
