DALLAS – Today in Aviation, the German leisure carrier Hapag-Lloyd Flug (HF) operated its maiden flight in 1973 with a Boeing 727-100. 124 passengers departed Hamburg (HAM) bound for Ibiza (IBZ).
History
Hapag-Lloyd Flug was established in 1972 by the shipping giant of the same name to carry passengers to its cruise ships.
Initially using three Boeing 727s, HF expanded its network across the Mediterranean as the holiday market grew. By 1979, its fleet had grown to eight 727s.

On January 1, 1979, HF took over rival Bavaria Germanair (BV). With it came a fleet of Airbus A300B4s and BAC One-Eleven -400s and -500s.
The A300s were replaced by brand new wide-body Airbus A310s, the first arriving in January 1988. These longer-range jets allowed HF to expand across the Atlantic with charter flights to North America and the Caribbean.

737-800 Launch Customer
The carrier became the launch customer for the Boeing 737-800. HF initially ordered 16 of the type to replace its aging 737-400 and -500 models. Boeing handed over its first example to the airline on April 23.
In October 2000, HF also became the first airline to fly the 737-800 with blended winglets and provided one of their airframes as a certification-test model to trial the new technology.
The iconic HF livery, unchanged for nearly 30 years, disappeared in 2002 as owners TUI AG looked to streamline their aviation businesses. In January 2007, the Hapag-Lloyd and Hapag Lloyd Express names were retired, with the airline becoming simply TUIfly Germany.
Featured image: HF would operate both the -100 and -200 series of the 727. (Photo: Riik@mctr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)