and to defend its market leadership in the West Berlin air charter market, it needed to re-equip with jets as well. Although it had already ordered the Douglas DC-8 Super 60 series and would operate the Boeing 707 as well, these were long-range aircraft unsuited to taking off from and landing on Tempelhof's short runways (as well as short runways at some overseas destination airports) with a viable payload. They were also unsuitable for the short- and medium-haul flights that dominated West Berlin charter flying and had too many seats to fill for most of the routes served by West Berlin charter aircraft. To match the superior performance of British competitors' jets and to exceed their passenger comfort, Saturn had no option but to acquire a dedicated fleet of short-/medium-haul jets, such as the Boeing 727, Boeing 737 or Douglas DC-9 for its West Berlin operation. However, following a change in Saturn's ownership, the new management decided to close the airline's Tempelhof base in 1967. Although Saturn's contemporary British competitors in the West Berlin charter market moved quickly to fill the void left by the US supplemental's departure from Berlin, Saturn's former Tempelhof station manager, John D. MacDonald, was keen to re-establish a local US charter presence. This resulted in John MacDonald contacting rival supplemental Modern Air, who were looking for additional work for their recently acquired CV-990 jets, and using his local contacts with Flug-Union Berlin and Berliner Flugring to assist Modern with securing sufficient work to open a base in Berlin. Ensuing successful negotiations with Berliner Flugring to operate a $3.5 million, West Berlin based programme, as well as a similar $2 million programme with Flug-Union Berlin and a $1.5 million, seven months wet lease of up to two aircraft to Canadian charter carrier Nordair, enabled Modern Air to profitably utilise its spare aircraft capacity. By the time Modern Air assumed Berliner Flugring's flying programme, the latter had become the city's foremost package tour operator. The two West Berlin charter flight programmes the American supplemental operated under contract to Berliner Flugring and Flug-Union Berlin accounted for approximately 500 round trips during its first summer season in West Berlin. The decision to supply whole-plane charter airline seats to both of the city's leading package tour operators also enabled Modern Air to take advantage of rules permitting regular charter flights from West Berlin all year round. This was more liberal