TUIfly

When the first wave of leisure flights rolls out at six on a summer morning, TUIfly is right in the middle of it at many German airports. For spotters, the airline seems quickly dealt with at first glance: blue and white, Boeing 737, done. At second glance it gets interesting – because five airlines from five countries fly in the same design, and even within the German fleet there are two 737 generations. Here you learn how to assign TUIfly reliably.

TUIfly at a glance

TUIfly is the German leisure airline of the TUI Group. The airline is headquartered in Langenhagen, right at Hannover Airport, and flies vacationers nonstop to destinations around the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Cape Verde, Cyprus and Egypt. Tour operators buy the largest share of the seats for package tours, above all the airline’s own group. Individual seats can be booked via the TUI website.

There is no hub in the sense of Lufthansa in Frankfurt. Instead, TUIfly bases its aircraft at five German bases and flies directly on vacation from there. The airline belongs to no alliance.

Within the group, TUIfly is one of five airlines. Together with TUI Airways, TUI fly Belgium, TUI fly Netherlands and TUI fly Nordic, it makes up the travel group’s airline family. According to the TUI Group, these five companies fly around 125 aircraft in total.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code X3: appears in the flight number, so on the departure board, in the travel confirmation and in the airport’s flight schedule.
• ICAO code TUI: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign TUI JET: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio. The callsign has been in use since 2010.

Handy for you: the ICAO code TUI really does belong to the German company. The sister airlines have their own codes – so if a blue-and-white 737 with a different ICAO code shows up on the tracker, it is very likely not TUIfly. Why flight number and callsign often look different on trackers is explained in the article on the difference between callsign and flight number. You can find the logic behind the codes in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

From Hapag-Lloyd Flug to TUIfly

TUIfly’s history begins with a shipping company. In 1972, Hapag-Lloyd founded its own airline, Hapag-Lloyd Flug. The first flight went from Hamburg to Ibiza with a Boeing 727 on March 30, 1973. Over the following decades, the airline with its yellow-and-white livery became a household name in German leisure flying. At times it also flew the Airbus A300 and Airbus A310 – types you now find in its colors at best in old photos.

In 2002, Hapag-Lloyd Express joined as a second company in the TUI group, offering city connections as a low-cost carrier. From 2005 the leisure brand was called Hapagfly, and the fleet was switched to the Boeing 737. In January 2007, TUI merged both brands under the new name TUIfly. Legally the companies initially stayed separate; in 2010 the Hapag-Lloyd airline was finally renamed TUIfly GmbH.

Several upheavals followed:

A foray into long-haul with the Boeing 787 from Düsseldorf had been announced for winter 2020/21 but did not happen because of the pandemic. TUIfly has thus remained a purely short- and medium-haul operation. How wet-lease contracts work, as TUIfly also flew them for Eurowings until about winter 2023/24, is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

The fleet: Boeing 737 only

The fleet is manageable and uniform. According to fleet overviews from fall 2026, it looks roughly like this:

Type	Number (approx.)	Seats	Spotter note
Boeing 737-800	14	186 or 189	Older part of the fleet, with classic winglets
Boeing 737 MAX 8	about 10	189	Registrations mostly D-AMA…, listed internally as “Boeing 737-8”
More 737 MAX 8	on order	–	Number and schedule differ depending on the source

Together that is around two dozen aircraft. The figures vary because TUIfly is gradually handing off older 737-800s – partly to sister airlines in the group, partly back to lessors – and taking over new MAXs. So treat the table as a snapshot.

The Boeing 737-800 is the workhorse of many European leisure airlines, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 its more economical successor. Both come from Boeing. If you are filling in Hapagfly or HLX days in your logbook, you will also come across the shorter Boeing 737-700.

A special feature for spotters: the MAX aircraft carry names of vacation destinations such as Corfu, Heraklion, Faro or Mallorca. A detail photo of the name on the fuselage makes your sighting easier to assign later.

737-800 or 737 MAX 8? How to tell them apart

Both types are almost the same length and wear the same paint. A few details still give away the generation:

The engines are the most reliable clue: you can see the MAX’s serrated edges well even on approach if you shoot from the side with a telephoto lens. If you want to get more confident at identifying in general, the guide Identifying aircraft types for beginners helps.

How to recognize TUIfly

Since the switch from yellow to blue, TUIfly has flown in the TUI Group’s group design: blue-and-white paint, TUI’s smile logo and, since 2016, simply the “TUI” titles instead of “TUIfly” on the fuselage. That is exactly where the trap lies. The sister airlines wear the same look, and they also fly 737s – at many vacation airports they stand right next to each other.

Here is how you separate the TUI airlines from one another:

Airline	Country	Registration prefix	Typical types
TUIfly	Germany	D-	737-800, 737 MAX 8
TUI Airways	United Kingdom	G-	737, Boeing 787
TUI fly Belgium	Belgium	OO-	737, Boeing 787
TUI fly Netherlands	Netherlands	PH-	737, Boeing 787
TUI fly Nordic	Sweden	SE-	737

So a Dreamliner in TUI colors is never TUIfly – the German company does not fly long-haul. On a 737, the registration decides. How to read registrations and which prefix belongs to which country is explained in the articles Understanding aircraft registrations and Aircraft country codes.

Special liveries

Special liveries are interesting for collectors. According to fleet overviews, individual aircraft advertise group brands like TUI BLUE, Robinson and RIU; D-AMAH has carried an anniversary livery for 50 years since 2024. Such liveries come and go – check whether the design is still flying before a targeted trip. You can find search tips in the article Finding special liveries.

Spotting TUIfly: the bases

Your best chances are at the five bases. Aircraft are based there overnight and take off in the morning for the first wave, returning in the afternoon and evening.

• Hanover: home base and company headquarters. From the observation deck at Hannover Airport you see TUIfly more often than anywhere else. You can find more about the airport on the page for Hannover Airport.
• Düsseldorf: big leisure airport in the west with lots of vacation traffic. A good spot is the Düsseldorf observation deck.
• Frankfurt: here the 737 almost disappears among the long-haul jets. From the Zeppelinheim viewing platform you can still get it in your viewfinder.
• Munich: from the visitors’ hill at Munich Airport you have a good view of the apron and taxiways.
• Stuttgart: compact airport with short distances; the Stuttgart observation deck is ideal.

A special feature in Hanover: TUIfly flies night mail flights on behalf of Deutsche Post (the German postal service), including to Stuttgart and Munich. So if you are at the airport in the evening, you can catch a TUIfly 737 even outside the leisure flight peaks.

TUIfly is also present at the vacation destinations – for example in Mallorca at Palma Airport or on Lanzarote, where from the Playa Honda beach you photograph approaches over the water. There you often meet TUIfly next to Condor, SunExpress, Discover Airlines and Marabu.

Before you set off, it is worth checking wind and runways: which side of the airport offers the better shots depends on the runway direction in use at the airport. If you are new, Plane spotting for beginners helps you get started.

Common mix-ups

• Taking every blue-and-white TUI 737 for TUIfly – TUI Airways, TUI fly Belgium, TUI fly Netherlands and TUI fly Nordic also fly 737s in the same design. The registration decides.
• Assigning a TUI Dreamliner to the German fleet – TUIfly does not fly the Boeing 787.
• Equating “TUI” in the name with the ICAO code – only the German company uses the ICAO code TUI; the sisters have their own codes.
• Trying to separate the 737-800 and MAX 8 by paint – both look the same, so watch the engines and winglets.
• Taking Hapag-Lloyd Flug for another airline – it is TUIfly’s direct predecessor.
• Using old base lists – after the downsizing from 2020, TUIfly flies from five German bases.

Conclusion

TUIfly is the leisure airline that has been bringing German vacationers into the sun for over 50 years – first as Hapag-Lloyd Flug, today in the blue-and-white TUI design. The fleet is small and uniform, but that is exactly what makes assigning them demanding: two 737 generations and four sister airlines in the same look have to be kept apart. With the registration, the ICAO code and a look at the engines, every sighting ends up cleanly in your logbook.