Editing Hapag-Lloyd Flug (section)

==History==
===Foundation and early years===
The original [[Hamburg America Line|HAPAG]] company first became involved in the aviation industry in 1910, sponsoring [[Zeppelin]] flights.
[[File:Hapag-Lloyd Boeing 737-2K5; D-AHLD, June 1988 AQB (4994409954).jpg|thumb|A Hapag-Lloyd [[Boeing 737-200]] in the original orange and blue livery that lasted for almost three decades.]]
[[File:Hapag-Lloyd_Airbus_A310-300_Verkuringen.jpg|thumb|Hapagfly [[Airbus A310-300]] wearing its old livery, 2004.]]
[[File:Hapagfly Boeing 737-800, D-AHFZ@ZRH,27.01.2007-449ef - Flickr - Aero Icarus.jpg|thumb|Hapagfly [[Boeing 737-800]] in its last livery, 2007.]]
Hapag-Lloyd Flug was established in July 1972, two years after HAPAG merged with [[Norddeutscher Lloyd]], when the Hapag-Lloyd shipping group bought a few [[Boeing 727]]s to fly its cruise passengers from [[Germany]] to the ports of call for the cruises. It began operations on 30 March 1973. With the boom of the holiday charter flight market in the 1970s, it quickly adopted charter flights to popular holiday destinations in the [[Mediterranean Sea]] area and the [[Canary Islands]] as well and soon became one of the biggest German charter airlines. Throughout the years, the airline added regular passenger flights to its schedule, as well as new airplanes, such as the [[Boeing 737-100]] and [[Airbus A310]] aircraft. In 1979, [[Bavaria Germanair]], a charter air carrier operating [[Airbus A300B4]] and [[British Aircraft Corporation]] [[BAC One-Eleven]] series 400 and 500 jets, was merged into Hapag-Lloyd Flug.

In 1998, it became the first airline in the world to adopt the [[Boeing 737-800]].

===Mergers and rebrandings===
Since 1997, it had been a subsidiary of [[TUI AG]], which also includes the [[Hapag-Lloyd]] cargo container line and cruise line. When TUI released their new "big smile" logo in 2002, the Hapag-Lloyd livery that had remained unchanged for almost 30 years was completely changed to a new, light blue, white and red scheme with the new TUI logo on the tail to represent TUI's new corporate design. 2002 also saw the founding of [[Hapag-Lloyd Express]], a [[Low-cost carrier|low-cost airline]] that was to compete with the likes of [[Ryanair]].

In November 2005, the airline changed its name to Hapagfly due to the new marketing strategy of the [[TUI Group]]. In January 2007 in a restructuring, it combined its operations with [[Hapag-Lloyd Express]] to become [[TUIfly]],<ref>[[Flight International]] 3 April 2007</ref> for which it operated all flights, while Hapag-Lloyd Express marketed them until TUIfly got its own license.