Actually, flight FRC 014 from Hamburg to Nuremberg looks like a completely normal scheduled flight: it is displayed at Gate A21 in Terminal 2, with the flight number, destination and departure time. The photo on the monitor is not quite right: it shows an Airbus 380, the largest commercial aircraft in the world. But this scheduled flight is not operated with a jet, but with a tiny propeller plane.

The waiting area in front of the gate is almost empty, as there are not several hundred people flying on board like in an Airbus or a Boeing – flight FRC 014 has space for a maximum of two passengers. This is why a black van is waiting in front of the departure gate, from where buses usually take the guests to the parking position on the apron.

He takes the only passenger across the apron to where the Gulfstreams and Cessna Citation business jets are parked. In between them is a small, twin-engine plane with long wings and a high-legged retractable landing gear that looks like a duck that has crash-landed.

“Sometimes the passengers gulp when they see our plane,” says Captain Daniel Brandhuber. Is that why they paid a good 600 euros for a one-way ticket? To travel through wind and weather from northern to southern Germany without air conditioning, a pressurized cabin and jet propulsion?

In fact, there is a world of difference between a commercial jet and this four-seater bird from Franconia Air Service in Nuremberg, which has been offering the route since last October. Two passengers can fly in the DA42 light aircraft from the Austrian company Diamond, with the two pilots occupying the front seats. “Paxe”, as the passengers are called in aviation jargon, climb over the wings onto the back seat. A bottle of water is available in the seat pocket. There is no more service than that.

The pilots have – of course – a commercial pilot’s license and fly according to instrument flight rules. The operation is approved by the Federal Aviation Office and is regularly inspected. Franconia Air Service is one of the mini-airlines in the country that still transports passengers in piston-engine aircraft. Most of them commute on short routes between the coast and the North Sea islands (see below).

The airline for business and private flights based near Nuremberg is the only provider that covers such a long distance with a relatively small aircraft on scheduled services: the direct air distance from Hamburg to Nuremberg is 462 kilometers. By car, the shortest route is 643 kilometers, which would take around six and a half hours. Deutsche Bahn needs just under five hours, provided its ICE is on time.

The calculated flight time today is one hour and 38 minutes. The time saved is enormous. “Everything OK?” asks Captain Brandhuber. Sure! The adventure can begin and the pilot starts the two diesel engines, each with 170 hp – the piston engines actually come from the automotive industry and have been converted for use in the air.

Everyone on board is wearing headphones so that the passengers can hear all the radio traffic. Our call sign today is “Franconia one four”, which is the same as the flight number. “Ready for taxi”, confirms the co-pilot, and we roll along the “Golf” taxiway to the holding point for runway 33. Then we are “cleared for take-off”, take off at around 130 kilometres per hour and leave Hamburg below us.

“Franconia one four” is not completely free like a bird. On the ground, every controller in charge knows where we are and where we want to go. The crew had previously submitted a flight plan that would take us along a precisely defined route on an airway towards Nuremberg. These routes are similar to junctions on a motorway. The one we are using today is called “Amluh One Golf” and the route takes us northwest past a few waypoints in a long right turn towards the south.

This route is already stored in the DA42’s “navigation system” until landing. The instrumentation comes from the manufacturer Garmin, which also offers its satellite-based navigation systems for aviation. Shortly after takeoff, the captain switches on the autopilot, which then flies the route independently. The two pilots therefore clearly have little to do; they radio now and again and have time to chat.

The DA42 climbs to 9,000 feet, a good 2,700 meters, and stays there – if we were to climb higher, we would have to put on oxygen masks because of the lack of a pressurized cabin. The pilots try to avoid this.

The weather is very good on this day; aviators call it “Florida”. The evening light colors the North German landscape a deep orange, we float above a few clouds, Hanover can be seen below. The lights of the towns and villages glow, the first car headlights can be seen on the streets. We are heading for the TURAP waypoint near Erfurt, one of a handful of landmarks on the flight plan. Our speed is 167 knots, which corresponds to 309 km/h.

That’s probably how it was when the first passengers of Deutsche Luft Hansa started using airplanes in the 1920s. Back then, the airline flew from Berlin via Danzig to Königsberg, for example, or from Hamburg via Hanover and Frankfurt to Munich. The flight time from north to south was about as long as the journey on the ICE does today – and was much more adventurous due to the lack of satellite navigation and precise weather forecasts.

The French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was a mail pilot and military pilot, captured this mood in his 1939 book “Wind, Sand and Stars”: “The airplane, the tool of air travel, confronts man with all the ancient mysteries of the world and becomes a tool of knowledge and self-knowledge for us.” For Saint-Exupéry, the scattered lights, like living stars, are witnesses to the miracle of human consciousness.

If you agree with the author, it becomes clear: flying is literally an expansion of horizons, a view from above of the bigger picture. On board such a small machine, with every jolt and jolt, it becomes much clearer than on board a giant jet what a huge step the invention of the airplane was for mankind, a miracle in fact.

In Saint-Exupéry’s time, there was probably a lot of fear as well as fascination, because an engine failure, which was not uncommon at the time, could have meant a dramatic end to a flight. It’s a good thing that the DA42 has two engines and that technology is much safer these days.

Are pilots still heroes? Flying may seem like the heroic overcoming of limits. In fact, it is constantly about limits: those of the aircraft and its limitations, those of the crew or those set by the weather.

Sometimes it can be bad: thunderstorms, low clouds or icing can be much harder on a small plane than on a large jet. Luckily, the DA42 is reliable – “we’ve only had to cancel one flight, and the big ones didn’t fly then either,” says Captain Brandhuber.

We have now flown over TURAP and are heading towards the next waypoint, a virtual beacon that no one can see and that only consists of coordinates: DN462, just outside Nuremberg. The day is slowly disappearing, the fiery red evening sky is casting the last light over the land.

There is hardly anything going on at Nuremberg Airport, we are “cleared to land” minutes before touchdown. Franconia makes up for the longer flight time compared to the jet: boarding and disembarking takes about as long as driving a car, and no one has to wait at the baggage carousel. But why do so few people fly?

The managing director of the small airline, Thomas Müller, gives one reason: the flight is not included in the Amadeus booking system, which is important for travel bookings. “We want to get in there and have already sent dozens of emails. But no one is responding.” The airline boss wants to continue anyway. “It will happen,” Müller believes. “We just need a handful of people who used to fly with Eurowings.”

It cannot actually be due to a lack of passenger interest: the Hamburg-Nuremberg connection was served non-stop by Eurowings with a few interruptions between 1996 and 2022. The comparatively high price is likely to be another reason for the subdued demand.

In addition to a sufficient budget, passengers should bring a bit of enthusiasm for flying – or be willing to be infected by the atmosphere on board. They could agree with Saint-Exupéry, who once wrote about aviators, which can also apply to passengers: “A good pilot is always watching his plane. A great pilot is always watching the sky.”

Franconia Air Service operates scheduled service with propeller aircraft connecting Nuremberg with, among others, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Bremen, Saarbrücken and Vienna (franconia-air-service.de).

Other small airlines mainly serve the islands in the North Sea. The mini-company FLN Frisia-Luftverkehr flies from Norddeich to Juist and Norderney and operates the Harle-Wangerooge route (inselflieger.de). Ostfriesische Flugdienst commutes between Emden and Borkum and offers flights from Büsum and Cuxhaven to Heligoland (fliegofd.de). Sylt Air flies passengers from Germany’s northernmost island to Hamburg with a mixed fleet of single- and twin-engine aircraft; it also uses two jets for charter flights (syltair.de).

A total of 102 airlines are registered with the Federal Aviation Office – from Lufthansa to single-aircraft airlines.