Transavia

Green, white and almost everywhere the sun shines: Transavia is one of the airlines you constantly see at Schiphol. For spotters the KLM subsidiary is especially exciting right now, because its fleet is visibly changing generations. The proven Boeing 737-800 is making way for the Airbus A321neo – and with every delivery, a Transavia 737 becomes rarer. Here you learn how to reliably identify Transavia, tell it apart from Transavia France and where to catch it best.

Transavia at a glance

Transavia is KLM’s low-cost airline and thus part of the Air France-KLM group. It was founded in 1965 as Transavia Holland, and in November 1966 the first commercial flight went from Amsterdam to Naples with a Douglas DC-6. For a long time Transavia was mainly a charter airline for vacation flights. KLM came in as majority owner in 1991 and took over the remaining shares in 2003.

Transavia made the move to today’s low-cost airline in the mid-2000s: in 2005 the charter operation and the budget brand Basiq Air merged under the name transavia.com. A new brand identity followed in 2015 – the “.com” was dropped and green became the defining color. Since summer 2026 the administration has been based in a new office building in Hoofddorp, right next to the train station and only a few kilometers from Schiphol.

Transavia flies point to point to destinations in Europe and North Africa, with a clear focus on sun destinations in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Morocco and the Canary Islands. Unlike its parent KLM, it does not rely on connecting passengers at a hub but on direct flights from several bases.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code HV: appears in the flight number on the departure board, ticket and flight plan.
• ICAO code TRA: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on most flight trackers.
• Callsign TRANSAVIA: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

Flight numbers sometimes play with digits. When the first A321neo was permanently stationed in Rotterdam at the end of September 2026, it landed there as HV010 – 010 is Rotterdam’s telephone area code, and the R in the registration PH-YHR also stands for the city. More on the difference between the two code systems is in the article IATA and ICAO codes explained.

Transavia or Transavia France?

The Transavia brand exists twice. For passengers that is hardly visible – same name, same website, same business model. For your logbook, though, the difference matters, because they are two separate airlines.

Feature	Transavia	Transavia France
Home country	Netherlands	France
Owner	KLM	majority Air France
Main base	Amsterdam Schiphol	Paris Orly
IATA / ICAO	HV / TRA	TO / TVF
Registration	PH-	F-
Airbus type in transition	A321neo, later A320neo	A320neo, A321neo from 2027

Transavia France has its own page. Remember for practice: the registration on the tail decides. A green 737 with F- is French, one with PH- is Dutch. How registrations are structured is explained in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.

The fleet: from Boeing to Airbus

For decades Transavia was a Boeing airline. The DC-6, Boeing 707 and Caravelle were followed from the 1970s by various generations of the Boeing 737, plus the Boeing 757 for a time. Most recently the fleet consisted of Boeing 737-700s and Boeing 737-800s. With Air France-KLM’s big order from Airbus at the end of 2021, the switch to the A320neo family began.

Type	Seats	Status (fall 2026)	Spotter tip
Boeing 737-800	189	a good 30 aircraft still in service, number falling	The workhorse – rarer every year
Airbus A321neo	232	18 aircraft delivered by July 2026, 21 Airbuses expected by year-end	Much longer fuselage, large engines
Airbus A320neo	–	on order, first delivery expected for 2027	Not yet in service
Boeing 737-700	–	retired since late 2024	Only in your archive now

Transavia took delivery of its first A321neo in December 2023 with the registration PH-YHZ, and the first scheduled flight followed on January 5, 2024. Since then the aircraft have arrived in quick succession: the 15th was handed over in Hamburg-Finkenwerder in February 2026, the 17th landed at Schiphol from Toulouse at the end of May, and the 18th followed in early July 2026. According to Transavia, the A321neo offers 43 more seats than the 737-800, emits over 15 percent less CO₂ per passenger and has a noise footprint about half the size.

The flip side: by February 2026, ten Boeing 737s had already left the fleet, some of them to be dismantled at St. Athan in Wales. Transavia has set itself the goal of a complete switch to Airbus by 2031, and in 2027 the airline wants to have completed more than half. In the long term the smaller A320neo will be added as well. The manufacturer of the previous fleet is Boeing.

737-800 or A321neo? How to tell them apart

Both types wear the same colors but are clearly different aircraft. With a little practice you recognize them on approach – a good school for the topic of telling Airbus and Boeing apart.

Length helps fastest: the A321neo looks positively stretched next to a 737-800. In detail, the engines reliably give away the type – the flattened nacelles of the 737 are a classic Boeing feature that you can recognize even in photos from a long distance.

How to recognize Transavia

The basic look is simple: white fuselage, lots of green and the lowercase “transavia” titles. Green has been the defining color since the rebrand in 2015, and the first aircraft in the then-new design was the 737-800 PH-HZE. In 2025 Transavia presented a further revised livery that all newly delivered Airbuses receive – PH-YHQ was only the second aircraft in this look in February 2026. In the next few years you will therefore meet several variants of the Transavia colors side by side.

A special subject is the retro livery: for the 60th anniversary, A321neo PH-YHD arrived at Schiphol in July 2025 in a historically inspired design. Such one-offs are the most sought-after Transavia photos of all. Tips on how to find special liveries are in the article Finding special liveries.

Bases and network

Transavia works with several home bases where aircraft and crews are stationed overnight:

• Amsterdam Schiphol: the main base and by far the place with the most Transavia traffic. More on the airport on the page for Amsterdam Schiphol.
• Rotterdam The Hague: a permanent base since 2000, with seven stationed aircraft. Since September 30, 2026, an A321neo, PH-YHR, has been permanently stationed there for the first time; the other six are 737s.
• Eindhoven: base for the southeast of the Netherlands, normally with nine aircraft. From February 1 to July 18, 2027, the airport is closed for runway work; afterward the A321neo will be used here, too.
• Brussels: in the network since 2022 and now a full base with its own crew and four aircraft. Information on the airport is on the page for Brussels.

Transavia no longer has a German base today. From 2016 to 2017 the airline had a base in Munich, which was closed again in October 2017.

Experiencing Transavia as a spotter

The best address is Schiphol. At the spotter spot at the Polderbaan, Transavia aircraft regularly come into your lens depending on the runway direction in use, along with KLM, KLM Cityhopper and many other airlines. A look at the runway direction in use at the airport is especially worthwhile here, because Schiphol has several runways that change with wind and time of day.

For spotters from Germany there is a special opportunity in 2027: during the Eindhoven closure, Transavia stations four aircraft in Weeze on the Lower Rhine and two in Maastricht. From Weeze it goes to Alicante, Málaga, Faro, Lisbon, Marrakesh and the Canary Islands, among others. That means green Transavia aircraft regularly depart from a German airport – a constellation that is limited in time.

In Brussels the spotter zone in Steenokkerzeel is worthwhile. And at vacation destinations on the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands you often meet Transavia next to Ryanair and Eurowings anyway – a good opportunity for comparison photos of different low-cost fleets.

Quieter at night

One topic that directly shapes the fleet is the noise around Schiphol. Dutch politics demands considerably quieter nights at the country’s largest airport. Transavia responds by preferring to use the A321neo at night: in summer 2026, according to the airline, it flew 62 percent of its night flights at Schiphol with the Airbus. For you this is a practical hint – if you are looking for the 737-800, your odds are better during the day; if you want the A321neo, you stand at the fence early in the morning or late in the evening.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Transavia and Transavia France – registration (PH- or F-) and ICAO code (TRA or TVF) separate the two airlines.
• Thinking HV is a country code – IATA codes are pure airline identifiers.
• Mistaking the A321neo for an A320neo – at Transavia NL only the long A321neo flies so far; the A320neo comes later.
• Thinking Transavia is a KLM brand without its own flight operations – Transavia is a separate airline with its own codes and its own operations.
• Thinking Transavia is a SkyTeam member – only the parents KLM and Air France belong to the alliance.
• Taking over old spotter reports on the fleet – the number of 737s falls every year, and the 737-700 has already disappeared.

Conclusion

Transavia is more than the green leisure airline from Schiphol. Behind the brand stand a Dutch and a French airline, a fleet in the middle of the switch from Boeing to Airbus and bases in two countries. It is precisely this transition that makes Transavia appealing to spotters: the 737-800 disappears a little more each year, while the A321neo and new liveries arrive. If you note registration and ICAO code, you document a piece of fleet history while it can still be seen.