{"id":12318,"date":"2024-07-03T08:15:47","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T06:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/unkategorisiert\/friendship-war-and-reconciliation\/"},"modified":"2024-07-13T12:15:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T10:15:29","slug":"friendship-war-and-reconciliation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/people\/friendship-war-and-reconciliation\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendship, competition and reconciliation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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FRIENDSHIP, competition\n
AND RECONCILIATION<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A little story about the owners of vogelfrei.
How a good friendship turned into bitter competition and finally a joint venture.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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ONCE UPON A TIME, LONG AGO<\/b>R TIME IN THE MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHERN GERMANY<\/b><\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Schelli becomes a fledgling (2001)<\/strong>
<\/i>… a flight instructor who stood at the take-off and landing site day after day with a radio to get his students safely into the air and back on the ground. But he actually preferred to be up in the air himself and the longing for more airtime was crying out for change. His passion for tandem flying grew in 2001 when he won the German Cross-Country Cup in the tandem category with the first tandem crossing of the Alps from the Nebelhorn to just before Merano, so much so that it more or less had to happen: the flight instructor “Schelli” became the company founder and tandem pilot “Schelli”. Against all doubts, within two years he managed to establish “Flyzone – Tandem Flying with Professionals” in the Nebelhorn and H\u00f6rnerbahn flying areas in such a way that first he and then later some of his flying friends were able to earn their “bread and butter” with the new business model. The slogan “Tandem flying with professionals” was intended to emphasize his philosophy of maximum pilot quality right from the start. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Flies, friends, pancakes (2007)<\/strong>
<\/i>… on a small practice slope near Kempten, a 17-year-old who spent every spare minute playing in the wind with his uncle’s old paraglider and gaining flying experience “like crazy” – obviously infected with the “flying virus”. The intensive practice was to pay off just six months later at the launch site of the H\u00f6rnerbahn: Tobi completed his test flight with flying colors. His examiner at the landing site: Schelli. Due to their shared passion for paragliding, this was not to be their first encounter. Several reunions at the launch sites and joint explorations of the Allg\u00e4u mountains led to a close friendship. One highlight was a joint bivouac tour in the Oberstdorf mountains, which the two of them would remember for a long time to come with a sunrise flight the next morning. It was more or less inevitable that Tobi’s desire to become a tandem pilot would grow. Tobi’s former flight instructor Michel was also one of his masters and supporters at the time. Tobi’s flying talent and the experience of his friends, including Manuel N\u00fcbel, newly crowned German champion, quickly gave the young, wild pilot wings, so that he soon began his training as a tandem pilot in order to achieve his dream job as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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War (2011)<\/strong>
<\/i>Michel and Tobi formed “vogelfrei Gleitschirm Tandemfl\u00fcge” to also get involved in the tandem business. They quickly made a name for themselves and were surprised at how well the idea of “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” became established. Schelli was disappointed with the two of them and the competitive situation, which was getting worse and worse, drove a wedge between the three of them: the friendship broke down. Now there was “Flyzone” with meanwhile 7 pilots, most of them full-time and bird-free, who had to assert themselves in pairs, but quickly growing.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reconciliation: The beginning on the deck of a ferry to Sicily (2015) <\/strong>
<\/i>Tandem pilot Tobi – who was brooding over many experiences on his 6-week bike tour from the Allg\u00e4u to Sicily – and now sitting on this very deck, began to write a letter. The letter was addressed to Schelli and contained an apology, a reappraisal of the last few years and a wish for reconciliation from Tobi. And so it came as it had to, Schelli, Tobi and Michel buried the hatchet – in the middle of the mountains, of course – and reconciled. This was the fertile breeding ground for more cooperation instead of competition – from then on it was all about using synergies, optimizing costs and growing together: the tandem business became more professional and flourished to such an extent that it became necessary to hire office staff – and there was also the possibility of a joint booking office at the valley station of the Nebelhornbahn. The atmosphere between them improved, but there were still two companies that occasionally took advantage of one another. Time also brought change between Manuel and Tobi. Just 4 years earlier, Tobi had been warmly welcomed into Manuel’s apartment as a “poor” student when he “escaped from his parents’ home” shortly before his A-levels, where he was able to devote himself entirely to learning…..\u00e4hm Flying, as his parents wished. The tide turned and now it was Tobi who first took Manu on as a tandem pilot and shortly afterwards as co-owner in equal shares at vogelfrei. Both tandem companies continued to grow and with them the idea of merging in order to be able to offer an even wider range of services. And – exactly – in 2016 it happened as it had to: the agency “vogelfrei – Tandemfliegen mit Profis” came to life. After 15 years of building Flyzone into a healthy company, Schelli flew into the vogelfrei nest. Of course, the shared philosophy of “tandem flying with professionals”, whose slogan now features in the revised vogelfrei logo, is still with us. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Today<\/strong>
<\/i>The company philosophy paid off and the vogelfrei team grew to 19 full-time pilots and 5 office staff. The team is united not only by their profession, but also by their friendships and, above all, their shared passion for paragliding.<\/p>\n

Letting go is often the new beginning of a wonderful idea and friendship. And if they’re not on vacation, they’re flying today.<\/p>\n

Full of emotion and anticipation for what lies ahead<\/p>\n

Schelli, Tobi, Manu and Michel<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A little story about the owners of vogelfrei. How a good friendship turned into bitter competition and finally a joint venture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","category-behind-the-scenes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12318"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12647,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12318\/revisions\/12647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vogelfrei.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}