Spanair

If you stood at the fence in Mallorca, Madrid or Barcelona in the 1990s and 2000s, you almost always had Spanair in your viewfinder: slim MD-80s with rear-mounted engines, Spanish registrations and aircraft names starting with “Sun.” Today the airline no longer exists. In January 2012, its entire fleet was grounded practically overnight. This page sums up how an SAS charter offshoot became a Star Alliance airline, which aircraft it flew, what happened in the crash of Flight 5022 – and how to recognize Spanair with confidence in old photos and logbooks.

Spanair at a glance

Spanair was a Spanish airline that flew from 1988 to 2012. It was founded in December 1986 as a joint venture between the Scandinavian SAS and the Spanish investment company Teinver. In March 1988, the first aircraft took off – initially in charter service, bringing vacationers from northern and central Europe to the Spanish coasts and islands.

Spanair got its big chance in 1994: that was when the monopoly of Iberia on Spanish domestic routes ended, and Spanair entered scheduled service. In the following years it became the most important private competitor of state-owned Iberia on routes such as Madrid–Barcelona or to the Balearic and Canary Islands. From 2003, Spanair was a member of Star Alliance.

The end came abruptly. After years of losses, a serious accident in 2008 and a change of ownership in 2009, Spanair ceased flight operations on January 27, 2012. For spotters, the airline is now a chapter of aviation history – but one that is still very much present in many photo archives and logbooks.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code JK: appeared in the flight number, on departure boards and on tickets.
• ICAO code JKK: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign SPANAIR: how the crew identified themselves on the radio.

With historic airlines in particular, it pays to note the codes carefully. Many IATA codes are reassigned after an airline ends. So if you come across JK in an old schedule database, pay attention to the date: until January 2012, the code belongs to Spanair. How to read registrations and codes in general is explained in the guide Understanding aircraft registrations; you’ll find the difference between the two code systems in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

History: from charter airline to Star Alliance carrier

In its early years, Spanair was strongly focused on Mallorca: its headquarters were right at Palma de Mallorca Airport. With the move into scheduled service, Madrid and Barcelona gained importance. On long-haul, Spanair first flew charters from 1991 and from 1997 its own scheduled flights from Madrid, but gave up this business again after air traffic collapsed in 2001. After that it offered long-distance destinations only through codeshare partners.

Joining Star Alliance in 2003 made Spanair the Spanish building block of the alliance around Lufthansa and SAS. For travelers, that meant earning miles and connecting to partner flights. For spotters, it meant that Spanair aircraft showed up in the alliance’s livery overviews. You’ll find more on the alliances and their special liveries in Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam and in Alliance liveries.

The fleet: MD-80 and later Airbus

For years, Spanair was one of Europe’s most distinctive MD-80 operators. The types of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family shaped the airline’s look from the early 1990s until shortly before the end. From the 2000s, Spanair gradually replaced them with the Airbus A320 family.

Type	Period (approx.)	Role at Spanair	Spotter tip
MD-82	1990–2009	Workhorse of the early years	Type involved in the crash of Flight 5022
MD-83	1993–2011	Largest sub-fleet of the MD-80 family	Longer-range version
MD-87	1996–2011	Smaller routes, fewer seats	Much shorter fuselage than the other MD-80s
MD-81	2005–2006	Briefly leased from SAS	Rare, good for the type list
Airbus A320	2000s to 2012	Replacement for the MD-80, latterly the largest sub-fleet	Most common Spanair type of the last years
Airbus A321	2000s to 2012	Reinforcement on high-demand routes	Stretched A320 version with four pairs of doors
Boeing 717-200	2007–2011	Small fleet, later passed to Blue1	Short episode, interesting for collectors
Fokker 100	2005–2008	Briefly leased	Rare type in Spanair colors
Boeing 757-200	1996–1998	Briefly leased	Rarity
Boeing 767-300ER	1991–2002	Long-haul	The airline’s only widebody jet

At the end, the active fleet comprised just under 30 aircraft: mostly A320s and A321s, plus a handful each of MD-83s and MD-87s. Spanair had already given up its last MD-82 in 2009. All aircraft were leased and went back to their owners after the end. The four Boeing 717s had already moved in 2011 to the SAS subsidiary Blue1 in Finland.

MD-80 or Airbus? How to sort old Spanair photos

When you have an old photo of a Spanair aircraft in front of you, the first question is usually: which generation? The two fleet lines differ so clearly that you can tell them apart from the silhouette alone.

With the Douglas jets, a second look is worthwhile. The MD-82 and MD-83 are almost impossible to tell apart from the outside; only the registration, which you check against a database, helps here. The MD-87, on the other hand, you recognize by its shorter fuselage and slightly taller vertical fin. And the Boeing 717 looks like a small MD-80, but has more modern engine nacelles and a glass cockpit – from the outside it is recognizable mainly by its shorter overall length. The guide Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky helps with identifying older types.

How to recognize Spanair

Spanair’s look changed over time. The airline used three logos: one from 1986 to 1999, a second from 1999 to 2009 and finally a new one, which the public helped choose by vote in 2009. It appeared on the aircraft from June 2009. Because a fleet is never repainted all at once, a close look at the logo is worthwhile with photos from 2009 to 2012 – it helps with dating them.

There are also a few reliable features:

• Registration with EC-: The fleet was registered in Spain.
• Aircraft names with “Sun”: The aircraft carried names like “Sunbreeze” – that was the name of the aircraft on Flight 5022 – or “Sunseeker.”
• Star Alliance special livery: A few aircraft, including the MD-82 of Flight 5022, flew in the alliance design.

Flight 5022: the Madrid crash

On August 20, 2008, Spanair Flight JK5022 crashed shortly after liftoff from runway 36L at Madrid-Barajas. The MD-82 with the registration EC-HFP was on its way from Barcelona via Madrid to Gran Canaria. There were 172 people on board: 166 passengers and six crew members. 154 of them died, 18 survived. It was the first fatal accident in Spanair’s history and the worst air disaster in Spain in 25 years.

The Spanish accident investigation authority CIAIAC presented its final report in July 2011. Its central finding: the crew had not extended the flaps and slats for takeoff. Without these lift devices, the aircraft stalled shortly after liftoff and hit the ground next to the runway. The takeoff warning system, which is supposed to report exactly this error, did not sound. The investigation could not conclusively establish why it failed. The report named errors in working through the checklists and inadequate cooperation in the cockpit as contributing factors.

It had been preceded by an aborted first takeoff attempt: about an hour earlier, the aircraft had returned because of an overheated air temperature probe; maintenance deactivated its heating, which was permitted under the minimum equipment list. An engine fire or an explosion was ruled out as a cause.

Checklist discipline and cockpit cooperation are topics that have been at the core of pilot training since the Tenerife disaster of 1977.

The end in January 2012

Even before the accident, Spanair was under financial pressure. In summer 2008, the airline announced cutting around 1,100 of its roughly 3,800 jobs and canceled routes – the main reason cited was sharply higher fuel prices. The sale to the Catalan investors in 2009 brought new owners, but also a large mountain of debt.

In the end, hopes rested on Qatar Airways, which was negotiating an investment at the end of 2011. When the talks failed and no further public support came, Spanair ceased flight operations on January 27, 2012 – effective from the following night. In early February 2012, a court in Barcelona opened insolvency proceedings. Spanair thus joins a list of major European airline failures, which you’ll find in the overview Major airline failures in Europe.

Others then divided up the market. In Barcelona, it was mainly Vueling that expanded its position further, having merged in 2009 with the Iberia-affiliated Clickair. On domestic routes, Iberia and Air Europa remained the big names.

Spotting Spanair’s traces today

You can no longer photograph Spanair itself. Its former airports are still worth a visit, though – and sometimes you run into aircraft there with a Spanair past that kept flying with other airlines after 2012.

Another point of interest is Gran Canaria, one of Spanair’s most important Canary Islands destinations; there, the beach Ojos de Garza offers a good view of today’s traffic.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Spanair with Spantax – Spantax was a different Spanish charter airline, already discontinued in 1988.
• Trying to tell the MD-82 and MD-83 apart by looks – from the outside they are practically identical; only the registration and a database help.
• Mistaking the Boeing 717 for an MD-87 – both are short and have rear-mounted engines, but the 717 is a separate, newer design.
• Thinking Spanair was an Iberia subsidiary – Spanair was the private competition and belonged to SAS for a long time, not to Iberia.
• Assigning JK flights after 2012 to Spanair – after the airline’s end, the code no longer stands for Spanair.

Conclusion

For two decades, Spanair was the big private alternative to Iberia: founded with SAS, grown big with the MD-80, part of Star Alliance from 2003. The crash of Flight 5022 and persistent losses wore the airline down until it ceased operations in January 2012. For spotters, it remains an airline for the archive – with clear identifying features if you note registration, type and date carefully.