Sun-Air of Scandinavia

A small jet with a Union Jack on the tail lands in Bremen, Friedrichshafen or Billund – and the fuselage shows a Danish registration. If you have been spotting in northern Germany or Scandinavia in recent decades, you know that moment. Behind the British Airways look was Sun-Air of Scandinavia, a family-run airline from Billund. Since March 2025 the BA era has been over, and Sun-Air flies charter only. This page explains who Sun-Air is, how the franchise worked and how to recognize the Dornier 328JET.

Sun-Air at a glance

Sun-Air of Scandinavia is a private Danish airline based at Billund Airport in Jutland. It was founded by Niels Sundberg in 1978 – not as a scheduled airline but as a small air taxi and charter operation. The company is still family-owned today: his son Kristoffer Sundberg has been managing director since 2017, while the founder stayed with the company as chairman.

Today Sun-Air is part of the Sundberg Aviation Group. Besides the airline, it includes the business jet charter JoinJet, the air ambulance service SmuuthCare with Hawker 800s and the maintenance operation Sun-Air Technic. According to its own description, the group employs around 120 people and has branches in Thisted and Augsburg in addition to Billund.

But Sun-Air became known for something else: for almost three decades the airline was a franchise partner of British Airways. Anyone who booked a Sun-Air flight between 1996 and 2025 formally booked British Airways – and boarded an aircraft in BA colors that was registered in Denmark.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code EZ: Sun-Air’s own airline identifier. During the franchise years it was barely visible to passengers because scheduled flights were sold under BA flight numbers.
• ICAO code SUS: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign SUNSCAN: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio – a mix of “Sun” and “Scandinavia.”

It is exactly this double structure that makes Sun-Air interesting for spotters. The departure board showed a BA flight, the tracker an SUS flight, and the tail carried an OY registration. If you only looked at the flight number, it was easy to log the sighting wrongly. How to read tracker data correctly is shown in the guide to flight tracking for spotters.

History: from air taxi to BA franchise

Sun-Air’s development went through clear stages.

When the franchise began, operations ran under the brand British Airways Express. The fleet then consisted of small turboprops: around ten BAe Jetstream 31s with 18 seats and two Jetstream 41s with 30 seats. In the late 1990s two used BAe ATPs were added – larger turboprops that paved the way toward jet operations.

In the Danish market Sun-Air was a small but tenacious competitor. After a complaint by Sun-Air, the EU imposed fines in 2001 on SAS and Maersk Air for anticompetitive agreements. In 2009 Sun-Air spun off its charter division as JoinJet, which has since focused mainly on business jets. Also from 2009, Sun-Air advertised that food, drinks and baggage were included on scheduled flights.

In the 2010s the network grew into Germany. Sun-Air flew, among others, Hamburg–London City (2014 to 2016), from 2018 Friedrichshafen–Düsseldorf and from 2019 Friedrichshafen–Toulouse. From Bremen, BA flights to London and Manchester ran until February 2017 – you will find spot tips for there in the Bremen guide. A German subsidiary, Sun-Air of Germany, filed for insolvency in January 2021 – which ended the German routes.

The fleet: specialist for the Dornier 328JET

The trademark of Sun-Air’s last years is the Dornier 328JET. It is the jet version of the turboprop Dornier 328, which Sun-Air had also operated before. In the 2010s Sun-Air counted among the largest civil operators of this rare regional jet. In April 2014, for example, the airline used it to launch flights from Billund to Zurich.

Type	Role at Sun-Air	Seats	Spotter note
Dornier 328JET	Current fleet type, formerly the backbone of the BA franchise	up to 32	High wing with T-tail, two jets under the wings
Dornier 328-100	Earlier turboprop version	–	Same fuselage, but propellers instead of jet engines
BAe ATP	Taken over in the late 1990s (historic)	–	Large turboprop with a long, slim fuselage
BAe Jetstream 41	At the start of the franchise in 1996 (historic)	30	Low-wing turboprop, longer than the J31
BAe Jetstream 31	At the start of the franchise in 1996 (historic)	18	Small low-wing turboprop

According to Sun-Air, the 328JET offers up to 32 seats and flies with two pilots and one flight attendant. How many aircraft are currently active is hard to say: public fleet overviews listed around eight aircraft in 2024, and later information differs. The airline does not publish an official fleet number – so plan for a small fleet.

The 328 family was originally built by Dornier in Oberpfaffenhofen. The rights to the program now lie with Deutsche Aircraft, which is developing a new edition of the turboprop with the D328eco. For spotters, that means the 328JET remains an enthusiast’s type with few operators worldwide.

How to recognize the Dornier 328JET

Beginners like to confuse the 328JET with other small regional jets. Yet it has a fairly distinctive silhouette.

The biggest risk of confusion is with the turboprop sister, the Dornier 328. Fuselage, wing and tail are almost the same; only the powerplants differ. With a photo taken from a distance, it is therefore worth looking at the nacelles: slim jet engines under the wing, or propellers at the front of the nacelle? You will find an overview of other small jets under Telling regional jets apart, and Telling turboprops apart helps with the propeller types.

The BA livery: a franchise with its own registrations

During the franchise years, Sun-Air aircraft flew in British Airways livery. In the late 1990s, when BA experimented with various art tails, the Danish artist Per Arnoldi designed a tail motif of its own for Sun-Air. Later the airline switched to the Union Jack motif on the vertical stabilizer, as the BA fleet also wore it.

For spotters this was a double attraction: at first glance a BA aircraft, at second glance a type British Airways itself never operated, plus a Danish registration. Similar franchise models existed at other BA partners too, such as Loganair in Scotland. The group’s own regional subsidiary BA CityFlyer, by contrast, belongs directly to British Airways and thus to the International Airlines Group.

The route network – history today

The network changed often over the years. According to overviews from spring 2024, Sun-Air flew the following destinations for British Airways, among others:

Country	Destinations (all since discontinued)
Denmark	Billund, Aarhus
United Kingdom	London City, Manchester, Cambridge, Humberside
Germany	Bremen, Düsseldorf, Friedrichshafen, Hamburg, Munich
Norway	Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger
Sweden	Gothenburg, Stockholm Bromma
Belgium	Brussels
France	Toulouse

Typical for Sun-Air were thin business-travel routes between regional airports, which had too little demand for larger aircraft. The last route was Billund–London City. With its end in March 2025, Sun-Air said goodbye to scheduled service after more than three decades. The airline cited a changed market as the reason.

British Airways belongs to the oneworld alliance. Sun-Air itself was never an independent member there; the connection ran solely through the franchise with BA and ended with the scheduled flights.

Spotting Sun-Air today

As of October 2026, Sun-Air flies charter only. There are no fixed schedules anymore, so sightings are a matter of luck. Your best chances are in Billund, where the fleet is based. Former franchise airports also occasionally turn up again on charter assignments.

If you are traveling in Denmark anyway, combining it with Copenhagen is worthwhile: the spotting guide for Copenhagen Kastrup shows you the locations at the country’s largest airport. You will find general tips for smaller airports like Billund in the article Spotting at regional airports. Other Danish regional operators you may encounter there are DAT Danish Air Transport and the cargo airline Star Air. Historically, Cimber Air from Sønderborg belongs in this group too.

Sun-Air compared with other regional airlines

Sun-Air was never big, but it was typical of a model that worked in Europe for a long time: a small, private airline serving thin routes under the brand of a large network carrier. The advantage for the partners: the large airline gets feeder traffic from regions it cannot serve economically itself. The small airline benefits from distribution, frequent flyer program and brand recognition.

With rising costs, fewer business trips after the pandemic and new levies, this model has come under pressure. Many regional and franchise airlines have given up or reinvented themselves in recent years. You will get an overview of the scene in Regional airlines in Europe.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Sun-Air with British Airways – Sun-Air was an independent Danish franchise partner with its own ICAO code SUS.
• Confusing EZ with easyJet – easyJet uses the IATA code U2 and the ICAO code EZY; EZ belongs to Sun-Air.
• Confusing Sun-Air with SunExpress or Sunclass – despite similar names, these are completely different airlines.
• Taking the 328JET for a CRJ or ERJ – their engines sit at the rear of the fuselage, while the 328JET’s are under the wings.
• Mixing up the jet and turboprop Dornier – the Dornier 328-100 has propellers, the 328JET jet engines.
• Logging JoinJet business jets as Sun-Air – JoinJet flies under its own brand and with its own design.

Conclusion

Sun-Air of Scandinavia is a piece of European regional aviation history. An air taxi operation in Billund became British Airways’ first franchise partner outside Britain, serving thin routes between Scandinavia, Germany and Britain for almost three decades with small turboprops and later the Dornier 328JET. Since March 2025 the scheduled-service era has been over. For spotters, what remains is a rare charter airline – and an archive full of photos of BA jets with Danish registrations.