Interflug East Germany's Airline

I am a sucker for Soviet-era aviation. This excellent book by Sebastian Schmitz chronicles the story of Interflug, the airline of the German Democrat Republic until it's collapse after German unification. This is a story of Soviet airliners mostly, especially the Ilyushin Il-18 and Tupolev Tu-134.

However, the GDR did make an attempt to built their own domestic jet airliner, the Baade 152 but this futuristic looking bird never made it to production. Interflug struggled for a long time and were quite unprofitable at the end, having being unable to get more advanced and efficient aircraft to replace their ageing Soviet ones, apart from a single Airbus.

This is a story of the aircraft, the people and the operations. This includes the special flights used by the GDR secret police and military. I suspect service on these flights was somewhat spartan.

A very enjoyable read, the book is superb and has been very well put together with excellent design, material and good writing.