The German Leisure Airline Condor Celebrates 60 Years

FRANKFURT, GERMANY--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2016) - 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. 

Further information on the history of Condor can be found at the Condor Newsroom.

Condor Flugdienst GmbH has been flying its passengers to the world's most beautiful holiday destinations since 1956. On an annual basis, more than 7 million passengers fly with Condor to around 75 destinations in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Since 2013, the German airline Condor, is part of the Thomas Cook Group Airlines to which the Thomas Cook Airlines UK, Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium and Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia also belong. The fleet of the airlines in the Thomas Cook Group comprises 91 modern and environmentally friendly aircraft, of which 42 aircraft are in the Condor fleet: 9 Airbus A320s, 7 Airbus A321, 13 Boeing 757-300s and 13 Boeing 767-300s. The aircraft are maintained by the airline's own technical operations. Condor Airlines is enjoying great popularity among German people and can refer to itself as "Brand of the Year 2015". This is the finding of a ranking carried out by the market research institute YouGov on behalf of the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, based on 700,000 online surveys. In the "Mobility" category, Condor achieved very good survey results. The annual "Brand of the Year 2015" distinction awards prizes to the strongest brands from various industries from a consumer viewpoint.