Deilmann: Dream cruises turn to nightmare

Deilmann's flagship, the MS Deutschland luxury liner

Peter Deilmann Reederei, the firm chartering the Air France Concorde that crashed near Paris, is Germany's premier cruise ship company.

Germans love to travel and sailing on cruise ships is popular, boosted by long-running television programmes like "Traumschiff" - the "Ship of Dreams".

It was one of the Deilmann ships, the MS Berlin, that provided the location for the Traumschiff television series.

The head of the company Peter Deilmann told Germany's ZDF television station in a telephone interview that he was "deeply shocked" by the crash.

The firm is based in Neustadt in Holstein, a small town at the Baltic Coast.

Founded in 1968, the company specialises in river cruises, but also operates two large cruise ships for luxury travel on the world's oceans.

Deilmann Reederei targets a wealthy and predominantely German clientele. Its flagship is the MS Deutschland, Germany's largest and most luxurious cruise ship.

Built in 1998, it offers plenty of space to its 520 passengers, featuring an "imperial ballroom" and crystal chandeliers.

It was the MS Deutschland that the passengers on the crashed Concorde were set to join.

The ship is currently in New York harbour, ready to take 510 passengers on a cruise through the Caribbean and the Panama canal to Manta in Ecuador.

The MS Berlin is Deilmann's other large cruise ship, plowing the seas from the Baltics to the Indian Ocean

For wealthy tourists with a sense of adventure, Deilmann offers cruises in the three-masted, fully air-conditioned barquentine Lilly Marlene.

50 guests share 25 cabins, each complete with bathroom, telephone and other amenities.

River cruises

But the mainstay of the company is its fleet of four and five star ships that cruise Europe's large rivers.

The Cézanne, Donauprinzessin, Dresden, Katharina von Bora, Königstein, Mozart, Princesse de Provence, and Prinzessin von Preussen, cruise the Danube and Rhine, Germany's Moselle and Elbe rivers, the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, and France's Rhône and Saône rivers.