Up, up and away! A British European Airways (BEA) Viscount turboprop seems to take forever to get off the runway at Tempelhof, but in minutes its Rolls Royce engines put it over the new Steglitz Autobahn segment. One of the stations for the new Express bus, Line 84, is visible under the propellor hub. The S-Bahn and weedy main line track from Potsdamer Bahnhof is to the left of the highway,
During the 1970-71 years in Berlin, Viscounts were used on the Berlin-Hannover run. On the short trip, the slower travel time in a turboprop made little difference versus jet aircraft. The slower take-off was a bit scary on the short Tempelhof runways; some passengers could be seen "helping" the plane get off the ground with "body English."
Once underway, the friendly British flight attendants would offer thick German coffee-- and a big chocolate bar, even on the first flights of the morning. Wearing sensible uniforms, including sweaters on the cold days, the stewardesses projected an air of competence. The flight crews included men who were old enough to have served in the Royal Air Force. I used to wonder how many of them had been on bombing runs over the same city that they now served so reliably.
While stationed in Berlin, I flew Berlin-Hamburg most often, but also made a round-trip to Bremen and this round-trip to Hannover, all on BEA. Round-trip airfares for Berlin travel to and from the Federal Republic were heavily subsidized. That, combined with the indirect rail routing for Allied military personnel via Helmstedt to northwestern Germany, made air travel more useful than on other short-haul services.
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