Hapag Lloyd

Hapag Lloyd Airlines is a charter airline based in Germany. It is a part of the Hapag Lloyd empire, which also includes a cargo container company, cruises and contract builders.

Hapag Lloyd Airline's history dates back to 1847, when Hamburg businessmen got together and decided to create the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft company,(Hamburg-American Line) dedicated to ship trips across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1857, a competitor, North German Lloyd is formed, and also starts sending their ships across the Atlantic one year later.

In 1891, Albert Ballen invents the cruise, which later would be incorpored into the Hapag and NGL ship fleets.

In 1910, Hapag became involved in the aviation industry for the first time, sponsoring Zeppelin flights.

During World War I , the ship fleets of both Hapag and NGL suffered great loss, and around the world, many cruises were lost during the conflict, so in 1918, Ballen committed suicide.

Five decades of more competition between the two companies went by, until in 1968 they decided to merge, under the name of Hapag-Lloyd.

Hapag Lloyd Airlines actually finally came into the consortium's picture in 1972, when the conglomerate bought a few Boeing 727's to start a charter airline so that they could also fly their cruise passengers from Germany to the cruises' port of calls.

Through the years, Hapag Lloyd Airlines has been able to add some regular passenger flights to their schedule, as well as new airplanes, such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus aircraft equipment.