The Ultimate Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter - American History Information Guide and Reference

LGW is a German regional airline officially known as Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter mbH. The Dortmund based airline transported about 50,000 passengers in 2003 and the expected sales is 13 million Euro in 2004. Altogether the company has approximately 75 employees, who are working in the parts flight operations, maintenance, ground operations, booking-center, flight-school and administration.

Contents

Code Data

IATA Code: HE
ICAO Code: LGW
Callsign: Walter

History

The company was founded by German pilot instructor Bernd Walter, who still is the owner and CEO of LGW, at Dortmund Wickede Airport in 1980. At the outset the small company offered flights to German North Sea islands, sightseeing-flights and flight-training with a single Cessna U 206 "Stationair". In 1988 LGW expanded with buying a Britten-Norman Islander for the North Sea flights.

After German reunification LGW was one of the first German airlines which started flights from West Germany to the former German Democratic Republic. LGW connected with Cessna 404 Dortmund with Berlin, Erfurt and other cities in former East Germany. As of 1992 the fleet was replaced by Dornier Do 228. In the meantime LGW took up new routes (e.g. from/to Hanover, Paderborn/Lippstadt or Rostock/Laage ) and has become one of the biggest regional airlines in North Rhine-Westphalia. In recent years LGW took over many routes, which was left by other airlines, e.g. the route Dortmund-Nuremberg (in 2002, ex. Eurowings), Dortmund-Stuttgart (in 2003, ex. European Air Express) and Dortmund-Berlin-Tempelhof (in 2004, ex. City Air Germany ).

Services

Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter is based at Dortmund Wickede Airport in Dortmund (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany. It has also one aircraft based at Düsseldorf International Airport and one based at Cologne/Bonn International Airport , too. LGW is the dominate regional airline at Dortmund Wickede Airport with daily flights to Berlin-Tempelhof, Dresden, Leipzig/Halle, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, in summer period also to Westerland /Sylt. The passengers of LGW are mainly businessmen.