Sunwing Airlines

Sunwing was one of those airlines that many Canadian vacationers knew but European spotters often couldn’t place at all – even though it was visible here for years. The leisure airline from Toronto flew Boeing 737s to Cuba, Mexico and the Caribbean in winter and sent its jets across the Atlantic in summer, where they flew for European airlines. Since May 2025, Sunwing Airlines is history: after the WestJet takeover, the fleet was absorbed into the larger sister airline. Here you learn how to classify Sunwing photos correctly, what became of the aircraft and why a Canadian registration on a TUI 737 was no mistake.

Sunwing Airlines at a glance

Sunwing Airlines was a Canadian leisure airline based in Toronto. It belonged to the Sunwing Travel Group, which also included the tour operator Sunwing Vacations. The idea was obvious: if you sell package holidays to the sun, an airline of your own lets you control seats, departure times and destinations yourself.

The first flight took off in November 2005 with a Boeing 737-800 from Toronto to Santiago de Cuba. More destinations followed shortly after, including a direct flight from small Sudbury in northern Ontario to Varadero. From November 2006 Sunwing also flew from Montréal, which became the most important base alongside Toronto Pearson. By 2008 the network already had 29 cities.

The business model was that of a classic leisure airline: most seats went to package vacationers, and the rest were sold as flight-only. How this model differs from scheduled service is explained in the article Charter vs. scheduled flights. Later Sunwing moved toward low-cost in its service: earlier there were free meals on longer flights, and most recently it was buy-on-board.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code WG: appeared in the flight number on tickets, departure boards and travel documents.
• ICAO code SWG: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign SUNWING: how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

Important for classifying old photos and logs: a Sunwing aircraft you see in the tracker from the end of May 2025 no longer flies as SWG but under the WestJet codes (IATA WS, ICAO WJA). So the colors may still say “Sunwing” while the flight plan long since says “WestJet.” The difference between the two code systems is explained in the article IATA and ICAO codes explained.

The fleet: Boeing 737s and almost nothing else

Throughout its whole history Sunwing was at its core a 737 airline. The backbone was the Boeing 737-800, and from May 2018 the Boeing 737 MAX 8 joined. The 737-800s flew with 189 seats in a densely configured economy class – typical for a leisure airline where capacity is what matters.

Type	Period	Seats	Use	Spotter tip
Boeing 737-800	2005–2025	189	Sun destinations, domestic routes, summer deployments in Europe	Winglets, classic CFM56 engines, type code B738
Boeing 737 MAX 8	2018–2025	one class	Sun destinations	Serrated engine trailing edge, split-scimitar winglets, type code B38M
Boeing 767-300ER (leased)	around 2012	–	Extra capacity	Leased from Euro Atlantic Airways
Boeing 767-300 (leased)	2019	–	Replacement during the MAX grounding	Leased from Eastern Airlines

On fleet size: the core fleet at times comprised around 26 aircraft. In the winters of 2013/14 and 2019/20, however, more than 30 aircraft were in service because Sunwing leased in additional aircraft. It is exactly this seasonal breathing that makes fleet figures for Sunwing difficult – depending on the cutoff date and the source, the numbers vary considerably.

For MAX growth, Sunwing signed a deal in 2015 with the leasing company Air Lease Corporation for two 737-800s and four 737 MAX 8s. When the MAX had to stay on the ground worldwide in March 2019, that hit Sunwing too; the airline filled the gap with leased widebody jets, among other things. How to reliably tell the 737 generations apart is explained in the article Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart; what is behind abbreviations like B738 and B38M is shown in the guide to ICAO type codes.

Summer in Europe: Sunwing jets in TUI service

For European spotters the most exciting chapter of the Sunwing story is the seasonal aircraft swap. Canadian vacationers fly south mainly in winter, Europeans head to the Mediterranean mainly in summer. So in summer Sunwing regularly sent several 737s to Europe, where they flew for airlines of the TUI Group and for Smartwings. In winter it ran the other way around: European aircraft then reinforced the Sunwing fleet in Canada.

For you this meant: a 737 with a Canadian C- registration in the service of a European leisure airline was, in summer, not an error in your logbook but a typical Sunwing swap. The TUI airlines in Europe include TUI Airways and TUIfly. The connection between the two companies went far back – as early as 2009 the Sunwing Travel Group entered a strategic partnership with the TUI Group. Incidentally, when approving the WestJet takeover, the Canadian government required that this seasonal leasing to European airlines be phased out.

Legally and organizationally, such deployments are usually a wet lease, that is, the rental of an aircraft together with its crew. The basics are in Wet lease explained. Because aircraft in such deployments often do not fly in the livery of the operating airline, the guide to hybrid and mixed liveries is also worth a look.

How to recognize Sunwing

The standard livery carried the “Sunwing” titles clearly visible on the fuselage – fitting for an airline whose name already gives the game away. Since the fleet consisted exclusively of 737s, the aircraft type alone helped little with identification. What mattered were the titles, the registration and the code.

Photos of special liveries are especially sought after by spotters. At leisure airlines such designs often advertise hotel or travel brands from the airline’s own package offering, which puts them in the category of advertising liveries. Which Sunwing registrations wore which design and when is best checked with dated photos in spotter databases. With the end of Sunwing, such liveries have disappeared; good photos of them are real collector’s items today. If you want to document such designs systematically, you will find tips in the guide to special liveries.

The WestJet takeover

In March 2022 the WestJet Group announced it would take over Sunwing Airlines and the tour operator Sunwing Vacations. The deal was politically sensitive, because the two companies were strong competitors in the business of package holidays to the sun. In October 2022, Canada’s Competition Bureau voiced substantial concerns that competition in sun-destination packages could suffer – especially on routes from western Canada.

In March 2023 the then Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, finally approved the takeover with conditions. These included maintaining a head office for the travel business in Toronto and a regional office in Montréal for at least five years. The takeover was completed on May 1, 2023.

Just a few weeks later, in June 2023, WestJet announced it would not continue Sunwing Airlines as a separate airline but integrate it into its own flight operations. October 2024 was initially named as the target, but in the end the process dragged on until May 2025. In parallel ran the integration of the ultra-low-cost subsidiary Swoop, which was already absorbed into WestJet in October 2023.

The end in May 2025 and what remains

On May 28, 2025 flight operations of Sunwing Airlines ended. After that, 18 aircraft moved to WestJet. They were not repainted right away and initially kept their all-economy cabin; WestJet planned to bring the aircraft into its own colors by the end of 2025 and adapt them to its own cabin standard. For spotters this created a transition phase in which WestJet flights were operated by Sunwing jets in their old look – a classic case for the “Hybrid and transition” folder.

The Sunwing brand, however, has not disappeared. The tour operator Sunwing Vacations continues to work within the WestJet Group’s travel business. The flights for Sunwing package holidays are now operated by WestJet. How strongly vacation flights depend on outside factors was shown in February 2026: because of an acute jet fuel shortage at Cuban airports, WestJet – including Sunwing Vacations – suspended its Cuba flights, of all places to the destination Sunwing had started with in 2005.

A network built for the Canadian winter

Sunwing’s route network was almost entirely geared to the Canadian winter. The most popular destinations were Varadero, Punta Cana, Cancún and Montego Bay. Cuba played a special role: by its own account, the Sunwing Travel Group brought more than 700,000 vacationers to the island every year. Added to that were destinations in Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and other countries, as well as Florida.

On the Canadian side Sunwing flew not only from the big bases of Toronto and Montréal, but seasonally from more than 20 airports across the country, all the way to the west coast. If you spotted in Canada, you therefore had good chances of a Sunwing 737 in winter even at smaller airports, for example at the Larry Berg Flight Path Park in Vancouver. In addition there was a daily domestic connection Toronto–Vancouver.

Independent forays to Europe remained a sideshow: in March 2013 Sunwing announced it would give up seasonal Europe flights, to Rome and Barcelona for example. The fact that most Europeans saw Sunwing anyway was down to the aircraft swap mentioned above – the 737s came, just not with a Sunwing flight number. How much the summer and winter schedules change the picture at airports is explained in the article IATA summer and winter schedules.

Headlines from 20 years

Like any airline with a long history, Sunwing experienced moments that drew attention beyond the aviation scene:

• Ownership dispute 2012: After a complaint, among others from Transat A.T., the parent company of Air Transat, the Canadian transport authority examined whether Sunwing complied with the limits on foreign ownership. In November 2012 the authority found that it did.
• Ramp bump 2018: On January 5, 2018, an empty Sunwing 737-800 collided with a parked WestJet 737-800 at Toronto Pearson Airport while being pushed back or taxiing; a small fire was extinguished. No one was injured – in hindsight an almost ironic first meeting of the later partners.
• Flight 2283 (December 2021): A charter flight from Montréal to Cancún with a partying group of influencers on board triggered nationwide outrage. Sunwing canceled the return flight, and Air Transat and Air Canada also declined to carry them.

In addition, Sunwing invested in the next generation: from 2016 there was a cadet program for aspiring pilots with Seneca College and the University of Waterloo.

Sunwing in the Canadian leisure market

Sunwing was never alone in the Canadian sun business. The most direct competitor was Air Transat from Montréal, which flies a similar package-holiday model with Airbus instead of Boeing. Air Canada Rouge, as Air Canada’s leisure subsidiary, served many of the same destinations. Historically, Sunwing joins a tradition of Canadian leisure airlines that includes Canada 3000 and Wardair.

With the integration into WestJet, the Canadian leisure market has become much more concentrated. Alongside it, low-cost carriers like Flair Airlines and regional partners like WestJet Encore offer spotters further 737 and Dash 8 subjects.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking Sunwing is still an active airline – flight operations ended on May 28, 2025; only the tour operator Sunwing Vacations is still active.
• Confusing WG with WS – WG was Sunwing, WS is WestJet.
• Logging a Sunwing 737 in WestJet service as a Sunwing flight – from the end of May 2025 the WestJet code counts, even with old colors.
• Taking a C- registration on a TUI or Smartwings 737 for a typo – in summer that was often a Sunwing aircraft on a European deployment.
• Assuming every Sunwing 737 is a MAX – most of the fleet was 737-800s; engines and winglets decide.
• Confusing Sunwing with Swoop – both were absorbed into WestJet, but Swoop was an ultra-low-cost brand and was integrated as early as 2023.

Conclusion

For about 20 years Sunwing Airlines was Canada’s sun flyer with Boeing 737s – and at the same time a quiet guest at European vacation airports, where its jets flew for TUI and Smartwings in summer. With the WestJet takeover and the last flight in May 2025, the airline is history, though some of the aircraft keep flying. For spotters that means: old Sunwing photos are valuable archive pieces, and anyone who knows former Sunwing registrations can follow their trail at WestJet.