Tourists Go On, Despite Concorde Crash

July 27, 2000 -- Six people missed the tragic Concorde flight because it was overbooked — six people who had planned to travel with 12 others on a “dream cruise” to South America.

And now, there are six people about the MS Deutschland who will be more conscious than anyone of the empty deckchairs — 12 in particular.

The six, from Germany’s Monchengladbach region, have decided to go on with the tour as scheduled, because that is what they think their friends would have wanted.

Renate and Ernst Zimmermanns, Rita and Werner Wormann, Bernd Coettges and travel agent Werner Glatzel, who organized the tour, rejected an offer of a trip home and a refund by the Peter Deilmann cruise line.

“It is our way of remembering them and all the happy times we had together,” says Glatzel.

Deadly Obligations; Lifesaving Thrift

But at least one person changed plans so they could be on that fateful flight. Jochen Appenrodt, 62, wanted to take a later trip to the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. But a sense of duty told him to go earlier — a sense that would cost him his life.

Appenrodt, an assistant school principal from Kamp-Linfort, who was also a past treasurer of the German Light Athletic Association, saw that part of the trip he originally planned coincided with the start of the new school year, so he changed his plans.

His only son is a pilot, enabling him to claim a reduced fare on the Concorde.

“As a schoolmaster he of course wanted to be an example to his pupils, so he did not ask for special leave,” said his friend, Franz-Josef Probst, president of the Light Athletic Association in the North Rhine region. “He took the Caribbean trip instead.”

A couple of hundred marks probably saved the lives of Werner and Sylvia Stolze, of Frankfurt. They gave one another the tickets for the cruise as birthday presents, intending to celebrate their 52nd birthdays and silver wedding anniversary on the ship.

They looked hard and long at the possibility of paying extra for the Concorde — and decided for a regular Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt instead.

If you think about it, says Werner Stolze, “the lack of a couple of hundred marks saved us from certain death.”

His wife Sylvia adds: “We have been given a second lease of life, and we should thank fate for it.

Saved by Romance

Romance saved Inge Ramthun and her friend, Andre Szyka, both 19.

She had been given the cruise, including Concorde trip, as a reward for passing her exams with flying colors. But Inge wanted to take Andre with her, and both thought it would be much more romantic to sail with the MS Deutchland from Cuxhaven to New York instead of flying.

She persuaded her parents to put the money saved into Andre’s holiday fund so that he could go with her.

Back home in Berlin, Inge’s mother Christel Ramthun saw the first reports of the tragedy, and phoned the couple on board the ship, where they were waiting for the other passengers to arrive.

“They were to first to hear the news,” she says. “Inge tells me it is really spooky on board, with all the empty deckchairs and cabins. I’m glad they have a chaplain with them.”

What began as a disagreement on how to celebrate their Golden Wedding ended in relief for Ernst-August Boeckenhauer and his wife Ursula, both 73. The couple had already been on three cruises with the Deilmann line, on the ship MS Berlin.

They live in Neustadt, the Baltic port home of the cruise line.

This time Ernst-August wanted to surprise his wife with something really special — the MS Deutschland luxury cruise, including Concorde Flight.

He filled out the forms. He left glossy brochures around the house. But she put her foot down. She wanted to celebrate this time among family and friends, she said. No cruise this year.

Grumbling, he conceded, though he kept trying to change her mind. Her obstinacy saved their lives.

“Thank God I couldn’t talk her into it,” he said, his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “There, but for the grace of God....”

They have been fending off phone calls from anxious friends who knew how determined Ernst-August had been to change his wife’s mind.

Both express sympathy for cruise line owner Peter Deilmann, a near neighbor. “I am so sorry for him, he looks terrible,” says Ursula. “It’s not his fault.”

Sympathy for the Cruise Director

That sympathy for the self-made boss of the Deilmann line is spread across the land.

Deilmann, a father of twins, started his working life as a dockside laborer and spent years directing vehicles on and off ferries to Scandinavia.

He watched the ships sail in and out and decided he wanted one of his own. He raised the money in 1968 to buy a freighter, turned a profit, bought more ships, and started a ferry service.

In 1980 he sold his vessels, bought his first passenger ship, the MS Berlin, and launched into the growing cruise market.

From there he went to strength and is now the owner of Germany’s largest cruise line with 11 sea- and rivergoing vessels.

Friends of the modest-living sympathetic shipping magnate, who describe him as “a hard worker, a patriot, a man you can trust,” say he is “gutted” by the Concorde crash.

“He aged overnight,” says one of his employees. “He is bleeding inside, but he is keeping himself together and carrying on. But he says he will never, ever book a Concorde again.”