What route and which airlines would you have taken flying from London to West Berlin in 1969?

What route and which airlines would you have taken flying from London to West Berlin in 1969?

You had three air corridors to choose from - but most London flights went via the British Sector on BEA, going to Tempelhof airport, or Tegel. You could usually see the Soviet fighters escorting you if the weather was good.

During the Cold War only US, British and French airlines were allowed to fly into West Berlin. In 1969 you had a choice of daily Paris Orly-Tegel flight on Air France, in a Caravelle, several daily BEA flights Tempelhof to London, Frankfurt, Munuch and several vacation destination in the Canary Islands and Mediterranean Sea, and frequent Pan Am flights between Tegel and its main German hub in Frankfurt.

All flights in and out of West Berlin were limited to three 20 mile wide air corridors with the maximum altitude of 10,000 feet. Needless to say that this limited the amount of air traffic to the city.

I drove there in the late seventies when the wall was still up. There was one road in from the west at Marienborn. I drove from West Germany into East Germany where there was passport control, across about 100 miles of East Germany, through another passport control and into West Berlin.
It was an interesting experience going through East Germany, because it was very poor, with strange little cheap cars everywhere. West Berlin, which was in the middle of East Germany, had the wall between it and East Berlin, as well as a fence, minefields and border gurards around the rest of it. West Berlin was the most vibrant city in Europe, with no closing hours on bars, and fantastic nightlife.

Route? Planes just fly. Though the East German authorities limited exactly which air corridors they could use.

As for airlines, almost certainly BEA to Tegel or Tempelhof. Lufthansa would have been most unlikely to be allowed into East German airspace, and that leaves American airlines for the only other possibilities.

BEA of course no longer exists - it merged with BOAC some years later to form British Airways.