Pullmantur Air

If you stood at Madrid-Barajas between 2003 and 2014, you knew the sight: a jumbo with “Pullmantur” titles, loaded with vacationers on their way to the Caribbean. Pullmantur Air wasn’t a big airline, but it was a striking one – a Spanish charter company that flew almost only Boeing 747s and was actually founded to bring cruise guests to their ships. Here you will learn how the airline came about, which jumbos it used and why its codes are still in the sky today.

Pullmantur Air at a glance

Pullmantur Air was a Spanish charter airline based in Madrid that flew under this name from summer 2003 to the end of 2014. The aircraft’s home was Madrid-Barajas Airport. Behind the airline was the travel company Pullmantur, which sold cruises, tours and package deals. The company’s own aircraft were meant to bring customers to where the trip really began: the cruise ports, mainly in the Caribbean.

What is special for spotters: Pullmantur Air relied almost exclusively on the Boeing 747. A small airline with a handful of four-engine aircraft was unusual even then. An older version of English-language Wikipedia gives just 53 employees and around 400,000 passengers a year for the period around 2007 – which shows how lean the company was.

Pullmantur Air didn’t disappear through a bankruptcy but through a change of ownership. After the sale of the majority in 2014, the airline operated as Wamos Air. Code, callsign and base stayed the same, while the fleet changed completely in the following years.

The history in stages

The airline was founded on June 23, 2003, as the aviation arm of Pullmantur. The travel group then belonged to the Spanish Grupo Marsans, which also owned another airline, Air Comet. At the start, the airline traded as Air Pullmantur. It flew its first assignment in summer 2003 with a Boeing 747 from Madrid to Cancún; Guadalajara in Mexico was also in the charter program early on. According to an earlier version of Spanish Wikipedia, the first 747-200 came from Singapore Airlines.

After the takeover by Royal Caribbean, the airline initially concentrated entirely on its core business: charter flights for the in-house tour operator and weekly connections from Madrid to the ports where Pullmantur’s ships departed. What sets such flights apart from classic scheduled service is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

At the end of 2010, Pullmantur Air then announced a new step: Tickets for the long-haul routes were to be freely available for sale as well. From 2011, the airline flew weekly from Madrid to Cancún and, in season, to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic – a bit of scheduled service with jumbos in a market where Iberia and Air Europa were the big names.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code EB: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards.
• ICAO code PLM: used by air traffic control in the flight plan – the abbreviation stands for “Pullmantur.”
• Callsign PULLMAN: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

The exciting thing about these codes: They haven’t disappeared. Wamos Air still flies with EB, PLM and the callsign PULLMAN. A “PLM” entry in your logbook can therefore mean either a Pullmantur jumbo from 2009 or a Wamos A330 from 2025. How IATA and ICAO codes are structured is shown in IATA and ICAO codes explained; why flight number and callsign aren’t the same thing is explained in Callsign and flight number.

The fleet: an airline of jumbos

The fleet history is quickly told and still exciting. In its roughly eleven years under this name, Pullmantur Air relied almost exclusively on the 747 from Boeing – first on examples of the early generations, then on the more modern second-hand 747-400s.

Type	Period (approx.)	Number	Spotter note
Boeing 747-200	2003 to 2008	3	Short hump, three windows in the upper-deck wall, no winglets; according to Wamos documents in the 747-200BM combi version
Boeing 747-300	2003 to 2008	1	Extended upper deck like the 747-400, but without winglets
Boeing 747-400	from about 2008	4 (as of 2011 and 2013)	Long upper deck and winglets on the wingtips; used aircraft from Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, among others

The exact dates vary by source: A Wikipedia version from spring 2009 still lists a 747-300 alongside three 747-400s for January 2009, while today’s Spanish fleet overview dates the departure of the older jumbos to 2008. What is certain: From 2009 at the latest, the fleet consisted only of 747-400s.

In early 2011, according to Spanish Wikipedia, there were four 747-400s – two former Singapore Airlines aircraft and two former Virgin Atlantic aircraft –, and two more were on order. In April 2013, the English version likewise recorded four 747-400s, one of which was in service for Saudia. Among the known registrations from that time is EC-LNA, a 747-446 – the customer code 46 in the type designation shows that the aircraft was originally built for Japan Airlines.

For identifying types in old photos, the guide Boeing 747-100 to 747-8 helps. How the 747 developed overall is told in The history of the Boeing 747.

747-200, 747-300 or 747-400?

Because Pullmantur Air flew three jumbo generations, a close look is worthwhile with old pictures. The livery alone says little about the series – the details on the aircraft say all the more.

The 747-300 is the oddball here: Its upper deck is already as long as that of the 747-400, but the winglets are missing. If you only look at the upper deck, you quickly log it wrong. How old a particular aircraft was and where it flew before can be found via the serial number – instructions in the guide How old is this aircraft?.

How to recognize Pullmantur Air

The surest way to identify Pullmantur photos is via the “Pullmantur” titles on the fuselage, the Spanish EC- registration and the type: A jumbo with an EC- registration from the years 2003 to 2014 most likely belonged to Pullmantur Air or one of the few other Spanish 747 operators. The design of the livery changed over the years; a photo on English-language Wikipedia shows, for example, an earlier Pullmantur 747-400 in the 2003 livery.

The risk of mix-ups exists mainly with the successor. Many Wamos 747s were the same aircraft as before at Pullmantur, in part with only slightly changed looks. One example of a Wamos 747 is EC-KSM, which shows up in photo archives with Wamos titles – for such aircraft, always check under which name it was flying at the time of the shot. Titles and date are therefore decisive.

Cruises, the Caribbean and special assignments

The route network reflected the business model. According to a Spanish Wikipedia version from 2011, alongside the scheduled destinations Cancún and Punta Cana, the program included numerous charter destinations: Aruba, Santo Domingo, Miami, New York JFK and Porlamar in Venezuela, plus Istanbul and Phuket and, in Europe, destinations such as Tenerife North, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Athens and Venice. Many of these flights fit cruises that began or ended there.

For spotters in central Europe, Pullmantur Air was therefore more of a stroke of luck than a regular guest. One of the best-known assignments in the German-speaking region fell in April 2010: When the ash cloud from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano paralyzed air traffic over Europe, TUI used a Pullmantur 747-400 to bring stranded vacationers from Tenerife to Salzburg. A jumbo at Salzburg Airport was an event in itself.

In addition, the airline leased aircraft with crew to other companies, such as Saudia. This wet-lease business later became the core of the airline under the Wamos name. How such contracts work is explained in Wet lease explained.

From the Pullmantur jumbo to the Wamos A330

In 2014, Royal Caribbean parted with the business outside cruising and sold 81 percent to the investor Springwater Capital; the Royal Caribbean Group kept a minority stake. The airline thus detached itself from the Pullmantur brand. According to Wikipedia, it operated as Wamos Air with a new look from December 2014, while the Spanish-language version dates the completion of the sale to 2015. Both statements fit the picture of a gradual transition around the turn of the year.

Under the new name, the jumbos kept flying for a few more years before the pandemic sealed their end and the airline switched entirely to the Airbus A330-200 and the longer A330-300. Why four-engine widebody jets disappeared almost everywhere in this period is put in context by The end of the four-engine jets.

The Pullmantur cruise brand itself is now history too. On the Spanish charter and Caribbean market, other names are active today, such as Iberojet, which took over the Madrid–Cancún and Madrid–Punta Cana routes from Wamos in 2022, or Plus Ultra with long-haul flights to Latin America.

Pullmantur Air in everyday spotting today

For your logbook, Pullmantur Air is mainly an archive topic. If you photographed in Madrid in the 2000s, with a bit of luck you will find the jumbos in your own folders – and should caption them with type, registration, place and date. Tips for a structure that still works after years are given in Archiving aircraft photos.

If you want to travel to the place where the Pullmantur story played out, Madrid has good vantage points. An overview is in the guide to plane spotting at Madrid-Barajas, and a well-known place is La Muñoza. What applies in Spain when photographing around airports is covered in Spotting in Spain.

A nice side effect: Because Wamos Air uses the same codes, you still hear the callsign “PULLMAN” on the radio today – just from an A330 instead of a jumbo.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Pullmantur Air and Wamos Air for two airlines – it is the same company, just with a new name from the end of 2014.
• Attributing PLM entries without a date – Wamos Air still uses the code and callsign today.
• Attributing a 767 fleet to Pullmantur Air – only Boeing 747s of the -200, -300 and -400 series are documented.
• Logging the 747-300 as a 747-400 – both have the long upper deck, but only the -400 carries winglets.
• Classifying Pullmantur Air as a failed airline – it was sold and renamed, not wound up.
• Equating the airline with the cruise line – the airline was a company of its own within the Pullmantur group and went its own way in 2014.

Conclusion

Pullmantur Air was a small airline with big aircraft: founded to bring cruise guests from Madrid to their ships and, for eleven years, flying almost only Boeing 747s. First came older 747-200s and a 747-300, then used 747-400s from Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. In 2014 came the sale, then the new name Wamos Air – codes and callsign stayed. For spotters, Pullmantur is now an archive chapter that can be cleanly unlocked with date, registration and a close look at the winglets.