Cirrus Airlines was founded in February 1995 as
Cirrus Luftfahrtgesellschaft mbH and operated an executive charter business. In March 1998, Cirrus Airlines received its licence to operate scheduled passenger services between Saarbrücken Airport and
Hamburg. In August 1999, Cirrus Airlines took over
Cosmos Air, its
Dornier 328 and the route between
Mannheim and
Berlin Tempelhof and
Baden Air in 2000. In February 2000, upon the 5th anniversary of Cirrus Airlines, it established a cooperative partnership with German-owned Lufthansa and became a
Team Lufthansa franchise member. In April that year, Cirrus received licences to operate regularly scheduled service between
Mannheim City Airport and Hamburg Airport and between Berlin and
Sylt. Cirrus steadily expanded its business, with scheduled services operating mainly from
Saarbrücken Airport and
Mannheim City Airport to domestic destinations. The following years the airline started to decentralize its operations, also flying low-density
point-to-point routes and adding
Embraer-Jets to its
Turboprop-Fleet. In 2004 Cirrus Airlines took over
Augsburg Airways, a
Lufthansa Regional member. The headquarters were consequently moved to
Hallbergmoos, near
Munich Airport.
Cirrus Technik and
Cirrus Flight Training remained at
Saarbrücken Airport. The company introduced a modified
corporate identity in January 2008. Cirrus Airlines was a company within
Aviation Investment Corp. along with
Cirrus Maintenance and
Cirrus Service. On 20 January 2012, the airline ceased operations and flew all aircraft back to Saarbrücken. This left some airports temporarily without scheduled service, like
Hof Airport and
Mannheim City Airport. ==Destinations==