I"). In addition to being a test of the limits of East-West cooperation in the then prevailing political climate of Détente (which aimed to create a more stable and predictable political environment by easing Cold War tensions), it was thought that this would be a major publicity coup for the airline and help it to raise its public profile further. Despite appearing cooperative initially, the Soviet authorities imposed increasingly onerous conditions on the airline and tour operator for the programme to go ahead. These ultimately proved unworkable and forced its abandonment. Similar to the case of the Bulgarian communist authorities' sudden and unexplained withdrawal of landing and overflight rights for flights originating/terminating in West Berlin (despite the much-needed hard currency Bulgaria earned from air navigation fees and airport user charges paid by the American and British airlines that operated these flights), some Western political observers at the time suspected behind-the-scenes East German lobbying of its Warsaw Pact ally and chief political backer respectively to have caused this to ensure East Germany's political and economic interests were not ignored in its Cold war allies' interactions with the West, especially where these concerned relations with West Berlin. Entering West Berlin executive charter and scheduled markets At its Berlin base, Modern Air also experimented with executive charter and scheduled services. Modern Air first applied for scheduled service rights between West Berlin and West Germany, as well as major European cities that could not be accessed by scheduled flights from West Berlin at the time, in 1969. Unlike West Berlin's established scheduled airlines, Modern Air promised to operate its planned scheduled services without subsidies on the internal German routes for which it was applying and, where it was planning to compete with existing operators, to undercut existing scheduled air fares by up to 50%. Its application initially focused on the Berlin–Saarbrücken route, which was not served by any of the city's established scheduled operators. Although the business community in both locations supported Modern's application, West Berlin's established airlines opposed it. Pan Am's opposition to Modern Air's plans was particularly fierce. As a consequence of a general slowdown in global air traffic growth and committing to a large number of Boeing 747s that proved difficult to fill profitably, it had fallen into loss. The only profitable part of Pan Am's worldwide scheduled operation was its Internal German Services (IGS) division. Although Modern Air's application for