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LTU International

LTU
Ltu logo.svg
IATA ICAO Callsign
LT LTU LTU
Founded 1955
Ceased operations 2009 (merged with Air Berlin)
Hubs
Frequent-flyer program topbonus
Fleet size 26 (as of March 2007)
Destinations 56 (as of March 2007)
Headquarters Düsseldorf, Germany
Key people Helmut Weixler (CEO)
Website ltu.com

LTU, legally incorporated as LTU Lufttransport-Unternehmen GmbH, was a German leisure airline headquartered in Düsseldorf. It operated medium and long-haul routes and maintained hubs at Düsseldorf Airport, Munich Airport and Berlin-Tegel Airport. LTU was acquired by Air Berlin in 2007. While its brand name has been left unused since 2009, LTU itself was dissolved by April 2011.

LTU was established in May 1955 as Lufttransport Union and started operations in Frankfurt. It adopted its present name in 1956 when it operated charter flights. LTU has been headquartered in Düsseldorf since 1961. The airline was owned at March 2007 by Intro Verwaltungsgesellschaft (55%) and Marbach Beteiligung und Consulting (45%) and had 2,892 employees before the Air Berlin merger.

In March 2007, Air Berlin took over LTU International, creating the fourth largest airline group in Europe in terms of traffic. Between them, the airlines carried 22.1 million passengers in 2006. The takeover was driven by the prospect of branching into long-haul operations and the chance to establish a stronger presence at Düsseldorf Airport. For a period, LTU retained its name on its leisure routes, while routes to the U.S. and China immediately switched to Air Berlin branding.

On 1 May 2007, LTU operated the first Arctic & North Pole Sightseeing Flight from continental Europe in aviation history for their charter customer Deutsche Polarflug. The flight took 12h55m and the aircraft, an A330-200 took a group of 283 passengers from Düsseldorf via Norway, Svalbard, The North Pole, Eastern Greenland and Iceland back to Düsseldorf.

LTU opened a third long-haul base besides Düsseldorf and Munich at Berlin Tegel Airport in October 2007, basing a single Airbus A330-200 there to launch flights to Bangkok, Punta Cana and Varadero.


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