Germany’s Green Airlines postpones debut to late 1Q21

German virtual start-up Green Airlines (Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden) has postponed its planned debut to March 26, 2021, with the first turbo-prop flight scheduled to take off from Paderborn/Lippstadt to the upmarket holiday resort of Westerland on Sylt, a German island in the Frisian archipelago in the North Sea. According to a notice on the company’s website, this first route will be followed by 4x weekly flights from Paderborn to Zurich in the summer of 2021, in addition to 2x weekly connections between Paderborn, Sylt, and Zurich, thereby connecting the popular German holiday island with Switzerland and providing onward international connections. Initial main route flights are to be operated with a wet-leased 70-seat ATR72-500 stationed at Paderborn-Lippstadt, with a smaller ATR42 and Beech 1900D, both leased from Chalair Aviation (CE, Caen), to be deployed as a back-up depending on reduced traffic demand during the pandemic. The company said it had chosen Paderborn Lippstadt due to its ÖKOPROFIT certification. ÖKOPROFIT (Ökologisches Projekt Für Integrierte Umwelt-Technik) is an initiative of Austrian and German municipalities working together with local companies to promote lower production costs and conserve natural resources (e.g. water and energy). The third route between Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden and Berlin is also in the pipeline for summer 2021, followed by a fourth route between Karlsruhe and Hamburg at the end of the summer, bookings for which will open during the Spring of 2021. Both destinations will be served several times a week, and sometimes several times a day, the company said. Initial plans for a November 1, 2020, launch from Karlsruhe Baden/Baden to Berlin and Hamburg have been postponed due to COVID-19.