Problems with the new direct weekly flight from Germany to Bermuda have been sorted out and it is expected that passenger numbers, which have been disappointingly low, will recover.

Difficulties resulting in a one-month delay before the new flight finally arrived in Bermuda have not stopped two leading German clothes designers from coming to the Island with the intention of carrying out a modelling photoshoot and writing about their impressions for an estimated lifestyle magazine readership of around 800,000.

Former Olympic skier Willy Bogner and wife Sonja head the Bogner clothing empire, which has been responsible for designing the German Olympic Team outfits since 1936.

The couple are in Bermuda this week to carry out fashion shoots and to explore Bermuda and report back to their customers and magazine readership in Germany. They have been impressed by what they have seen so-far.

Mr. Bogner said: ?We have a publication that is a combination of a magazine and catalogue showing clothes for the high-end market. There will be around 20 pages about Bermuda in the magazine including reportage that we do ourselves on the Island.?

The German businessman represented his country in the 1960 and 1964 Olympics as a skier and used his skiing skills to carve a second career as a film-maker, becoming a cameraman, unit director and action scene writer on four James Bond movies involving ski scenes, including ?The Spy Who Loved Me? and ?On Her Majesty?s Secret Service?.

The couple were encouraged to come to Bermuda by Andre Brenner, who has been the Tourism Ministry?s project director for the Munich-Bermuda air service.

Mr. Bogner said: ?Bermuda is really great. We have brought our models and done some shoots. We have been on the golf courses and seen the Gombey dancers.

?Bermuda is more intimate and that is a great asset, it is not dominated by tourism.

?Because there are places where you don?t get the local flavour anymore because there is so much going on.

?When you come from the outside you want to see something of the native culture and the people. The second biggest advantage for Bermuda is the friendly people, people are still open and not damaged by tourism. You feel like you are welcome here. You feel like you are with friends.?

Mrs. Bogner added: ?It is beautiful. It is like a jewel in the Atlantic. You have such wonderful people. We went out by ourselves and the people were just as nice even though they did not know who we were.?

The Bogners are amongst the first passengers to arrive on the Island on the new weekly Eurofly service, which originates in Italy and flies to Munich before making the trip to Bermuda.

An Airbus 390 aircraft is being used on the service, which was delayed by a month after the original charter company ran into difficulties getting authorised clearance in Europe.

Mr. Brenner, who has been co-ordinating the new service, said: ?As a result we had to react quickly and get a new aircraft.

?We lost a lot of bookings, so we have to work to get back up to the level of bookings we had initially.?

Tourism Minister Dr. Ewart Brown, commenting on the situation, said: ?We have had teething problems.

?There were difficulties on the German side in respect to the ?due diligence? that could have been done.

?The people who are now there and are in place are working tirelessly to make sure that those numbers improve and I?m confident the difficulties will be overcome and the flight from Germany will be more successful as we go into the summer.?