Ellinair

If you stood at the fence in Thessaloniki, Heraklion or Corfu between 2014 and 2020, you almost certainly saw them: white Airbus aircraft with a blue wave and the “Mouzenidis Group” titles on the fuselage. Ellinair was a tour operator’s airline, flew vacationers from Eastern Europe and Germany to Greece – and is history today. This page shows you how the airline worked, which aircraft it used and how to reliably recognize it in archive photos.

Ellinair at a glance

Ellinair was a Greek leisure and scheduled airline headquartered in Thessaloniki. It was founded on February 19, 2013 by the Mouzenidis Group, a tourism group from northern Greece. Its tour operator Mouzenidis Travel mainly sold package tours to vacationers from Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union. Instead of buying seats from other airlines, the group built its own airline. Ellinair began flight operations in winter 2013/14.

The principle is well known among tour operator airlines: the group fills the aircraft with its own package guests and sells remaining seats individually. Ellinair continued down this path consistently. From 2015, domestic Greek scheduled flights were added, from 2016/17 connections to Germany, later to Romania, Poland, Serbia, Georgia and, in 2020, Azerbaijan as well. How such hybrid models differ from classic charter airlines is explained in the article Charter flight and scheduled flight.

The airline reached its peak in 2019: according to a report by the Greek industry site GTP, it operated 6,555 flights that year and carried around 855,000 passengers at a load factor of just over 83 percent. The pandemic in spring 2020 and the parent company’s insolvency in June 2021 meant the end. Ellinair is thus a historic airline – today you only find it in photos, in logbooks and in registry data.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code EL: appeared in the flight number on tickets, departures boards and in schedules.
• ICAO code ELB: was shown in the flight plan filed with air traffic control and on flight trackers.
• Callsign ELLINAIR HELLAS: this is how the crews checked in on the radio – “Hellas” is the Greek name for Greece.

The name itself is a play on words: “Ellin” stands for “Greek” or “Greek person.” The airline’s advertising slogan in Greek was roughly “You have an alternative!” – an allusion to the competition with the dominant Aegean Airlines.

Bases and network

The heart of the airline was Thessaloniki Airport. Most connections to Russia and Ukraine departed from here, and a large part of the fleet was parked here overnight. In summer, Heraklion on Crete and Corfu were added as further starting points. At the end of 2018, a base at Athens Airport was added, from which Moscow and Thessaloniki, among others, were served. At times, sources also name Moscow as a base.

The network mirrored the parent group’s market. According to GTP, Ellinair connected the following, among others, in early 2020:

Starting point	Typical destinations (as of 2020)
Thessaloniki	Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Rostov, Samara, Volgograd, Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Katowice, Tbilisi, Baku
Heraklion	Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Lviv, Warsaw, Katowice, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Belgrade; domestic Thessaloniki
Corfu	Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, plus island connections to Zakynthos and Araxos
Athens	Moscow and domestic to Thessaloniki

In 2019, Ellinair agreed an interline agreement with Aeroflot, which made connecting itineraries on one ticket possible. Ellinair never belonged to an alliance.

Ellinair in Germany

For German spotters, Ellinair was mainly a summer airline. In April 2017, the connection from Cologne/Bonn Airport to Thessaloniki started, three times a week with an Airbus A319. Other German destinations before the pandemic were Stuttgart, Munich, Frankfurt and at times Berlin. Especially at places like Cologne/Bonn or Stuttgart, an Ellinair Airbus was a welcome change among the usual leisure airlines.

The fleet: many types in a few years

For a small airline, Ellinair changed aircraft astonishingly often. That comes down to the business model: in summer demand rose sharply, in winter it shrank. The airline covered peaks with leased aircraft including crew – that is, on wet lease.

Type	Period (approx.)	Seats	Registration examples	Spotter note
BAe 146 / Avro RJ	2013–2017	–	SX-EMS, SX-EMI	First fleet, four-engine high-wing jets
Airbus A319-100	2015/16–2020	144	SX-EMB	Drove the Western Europe business forward
Boeing 737-300/-400	approx. 2016–2019	148	partly foreign	Leased, partly on wet lease with crew
Airbus A320-200	2017/18–2021	180	SX-EMA, SX-EMJ, SX-EMY	Finally the only type in the fleet

The registration details come from fleet overviews that the airline did not publish itself; individual periods differ slightly depending on the source. The basic course is established: Ellinair started with jets of the BAe 146 family (sources name the Avro RJ85 or RJ100), then switched to the Airbus A319 and finally built on the Airbus A320. The second A319 with 144 seats arrived in Thessaloniki in February 2016. In November 2017, an A320 joined on wet lease from Armenia, followed later by its own leased A320s.

In early 2020, the airline reported taking over an A320 from Carlyle Aviation Partners and expected another from DAE Capital – the fleet would thus have comprised six aircraft: two A319s and four A320s. The pandemic wiped out these plans. At the end of 2021, only two inactive A320s with an average age of just under 18 years were still registered, which went back to the lessors.

A319, A320 or 737? How to sort old photos

Because Ellinair flew several types in a similar livery, a close look is worthwhile when sorting. The basic rules:

You will find more details on the differences within the Airbus family in the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart. For the leased Boeing aircraft, the article on 737 generations will help: Ellinair used examples of the Classic series, that is the 737-300 and 737-400. All Ellinair Airbus aircraft are first-generation – the airline never had an A320neo.

How to recognize Ellinair

The livery was simple but distinctive: white fuselage, a curved blue wave and blue accents on the tail and the engines. The logo consists of three slanted, wavy stripes reminiscent of the Greek flag. The fuselage carried “Ellinair” and – smaller – “Mouzenidis Group.” On the Airbus aircraft, the logo on the tail was white.

The leased Boeing 737s looked different. They mostly wore a simplified version without the blue wave but with a blue logo on the white tail. If you only photographed the tail, you can easily confuse such aircraft with other wet-lease aircraft.

Some Airbus aircraft also carried names of Greek places – according to fleet overviews, for example “Crete” on SX-EMB, “Thessaloniki” on SX-EMJ and “Athens” on SX-EMY. Such details help you assign a particular aircraft in a photo unambiguously.

The end: pandemic, insolvency, bankruptcy

In March 2020, Ellinair, like almost all airlines, had to largely suspend operations. For an airline that lived off the package tour business from Russia and Ukraine, this was especially hard. In June 2021, the parent company filed for insolvency. Ellinair grounded its aircraft and at first announced a restart for 2022, but put these plans on ice in November 2021 and returned the aircraft to the lessors.

After that, the airline only appeared in court reports: from 2023, industry media reported on insolvency petitions by former employees, which the company initially resisted. In July 2026, the industry service ch-aviation reported that Ellinair had been formally declared bankrupt. A comeback is thus not in sight. Ellinair joins a long list of European airline failures – more in the overview Major airline failures in Europe.

Spotting in Greece today

Even without Ellinair, the former bases remain exciting destinations. In Thessaloniki and Athens, Aegean with its Airbus fleet dominates today, and on many islands the subsidiary Olympic Air flies turboprops. In summer, leisure airlines from all over Europe bring variety. A classic among photo spots is Kanoni at Corfu Airport, where approaches pass low over the lagoon – exactly where Ellinair Airbus aircraft used to be seen as well.

Before you set out with your camera in Greece, read the plane spotting guide for Greece. There you will find what to look out for at Greek airports.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Ellinair for a pure charter airline – it also sold scheduled flights individually, domestic Greek as well as international.
• Taking EL for a country code – EL is the airline’s IATA code, not the abbreviation for Greece.
• Taking every 737 with an EL flight number for an own aircraft – the Boeings were leased, partly with crew and with foreign registrations.
• Confusing the A319 and A320 – count the emergency exits over the wing: one on the A319, two on the A320.
• Confusing Ellinair with Aegean – both are blue and white, but only Ellinair wore the wave and the Mouzenidis titles.
• Taking Ellinair for active – flight operations have been dormant since 2021, and since July 2026 the airline has been formally bankrupt.

Conclusion

Ellinair was a typical child of the package tour boom: a tour operator built its own airline, flew vacationers from Eastern Europe and Germany to Thessaloniki, Crete and Corfu and grew in a few years to around 850,000 passengers a year. For spotters, a short but varied history remains, with the Avro RJ, A319, A320 and leased 737s. If you sort old photos, look for the wave, logo and registration – then every Ellinair sighting ends up cleanly in your logbook.