Ever put something like kartoffelsalat in an airline city search and got a hit?

The Flight Detective
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Today marks the day that I learned the German word kartoffelsalat. I always enjoy learning new things, especially when it is aviation related – even when it is as random as this.

What is the relationship between potato salad – which is what the word means – and airlines? Well, you wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t a real thing, but here goes!

A Curious Thing On The TUI fly Website

Airline web sites are generally the same when booking flight tickets. You enter the place you want to leave from and go to in the boxes, whack in some dates and off you go. Nowadays, you can put in part of the word and it will helpfully bring up the options before you even finish typing.

If you go to the TUI fly web site and put in kartoffelsalat for one of the cities, it will bring up Frankfurt. Is this another name for the city perhaps or maybe it is something else?

Why Does Kartoffelsalat Bring Up Frankfurt?

According to frequent flyer legend, the A26 Lufthansa lounge at Frankfurt Airport was referred to as “Kartoffelsalatparadies” or potato salad paradise. The reason for this was their propensity to serve cheap potato salad and wiener sausages for the food spread.

Someone with a sense of humour added kartoffelsalat as a synonym for Frankfurt in the TUIfly destination selector on their web site. Apparently it has been there for more than a decade and is still live today.

Overall Thoughts

I like it when people do things like this, especially when it’s a little piece of harmless fun. I imagine nobody knows it’s there, because who puts in kartoffelsalad for Frankfurt? Even if someone at TUI fly does know, there’s probably no real reason to remove it.

Now heading over to potato salad paradise sounds like something I should be trying. It’s a dish I never get tired of eating, though I rarely actually have it, which is probably a good thing for my waistline!

Have you ever come across something like the kartoffelsalat on another airline web site? Or how about somewhere else online? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Milad A380 via Wikimedia Commons.
With thanks to El_Duderito on FlyerTalk.

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ChuckMO

Once, for kicks, I put in my hometown (about 10 miles east of Peoria, Illinois), I got some airstrip in Africa, Not gonna say the name of my hometown because its a really conservative enclave. And out of respect for their bigotry, I will leave them anonymous.

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