After a hot summer's day, shortly after 8:00 p.m. on the evening of July 12, 1984, deep black thunderclouds suddenly appeared over Munich. Immediately afterwards, gusts of wind with wind force 11 set in, and the temperature falls from 26 to 16 degrees Celsius within five minutes. This is the prelude to one of the most devastating hail disasters of the post-war period, which left a trail of devastation in the Bavarian capital and the surrounding districts. Riem Airport is located in the center of the storm and is seriously affected by hailstones the size of tennis balls.

Damage from hail is estimated at 1.5 billion DM

A total of 22 large passenger jets, ten of them from Lufthansa. Some of the machines were no longer airworthy. Of the 148 sports machines parked there outdoors, 90% were damaged. Cabin window u. Pilot cockpits were smashed. After the storm, some machines were only worth scrap. Around 400 cars parked at the airport and thousands in the city looked like after an explosion - windshields and rear windows burst, the sheet metal covered all over with dents. «The insurance industry puts the total damage caused by the hail in Munich at 1.5 billion DM and surroundings. FMG has to spend a total of DM 3.4 million to repair the building damage at Munich Airport.

Lufthansa fleet severely decimated

With 28 of the 517 route sections that Lufthansa flew daily at the time, 5% of the entire route network were temporarily paralyzed by the icy projectiles. The hail penetrated control flaps and the like. Oars of the Boeings u. put it out of service within 20 minutes.

Twenty technicians work continuously in shifts to handle the five Boeing 737s and the like. to restore five Boeing 727s at least to the point where they can be shipped to the LH shipyards in Hamburg u. Frankfurt can be flown. Meanwhile, the company tries to keep the consequences of the storm for passengers as low as possible. There was no replacement fleet, but Lufthansa announced on Friday evening in Cologne that it would handle its flights at the weekend "almost one hundred percent", despite the damage to the ten planes in Munich. The airline achieved this by using "all available reserves and the like. corresponding changes in the aircraft's circulation ”.

20 million D-Mark hail damage to Boing 757 of the LTS

The largest single item in the damage balance is a brand new Boeing B757-2G5 with hull number 23118/36 from the charter company LTS (later LTU SÜD), which was approaching when the storm broke out. The 757 only rolled out of Boeing's production hall on March 31, 1984 and was handed over to LTU on May 25, with the registration number D-AMUR, and leased directly to LTS. The Boing 757 was so damaged by the hail that the repair of this damage at Boeing in Seattle had to be carried out by the end of March for around 20 million DM.