TUI fly Nordic

If you stand on the spotter hill at Arlanda, you mostly see SAS, Norwegian and Ryanair. In between, a blue-and-white jet with the smile logo keeps showing up: TUI. At first glance it is just “some TUI”. In fact it is the smallest airline in the whole TUI family, with its own codes, a callsign from the 1990s and a fleet you can count on one hand. There is even a Dreamliner among them. Here you learn how to reliably recognize the Swedish TUI and where to catch it best.

TUI fly Nordic at a glance

TUI fly Nordic is the Swedish leisure airline of the TUI Group. The company is legally called TUIfly Nordic AB, is based in Stockholm and has its bases at Stockholm Arlanda Airport and Gothenburg Landvetter Airport. It flies for the TUI tour operators in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Most guests therefore buy their seats as part of a package tour.

Unlike its German sister TUIfly, TUI fly Nordic is not limited to short and medium haul. With its single Boeing 787-9 it also goes to long-haul destinations, most recently to the Caribbean and Africa, for example. That matters for Scandinavian vacationers: especially in the dark Nordic winter, warm long-haul destinations are in demand.

The airline belongs to no alliance. Within the group, together with TUIfly, TUI Airways, TUI fly Belgium and TUI fly Netherlands, it makes up the TUI Group airline family. According to the group, these five companies fly around 125 aircraft in total. With only four aircraft, the Swedish one is by far the smallest.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 6B: appears in the flight number, on the departure board and in the booking confirmation.
• ICAO code BLX: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign BLUESCAN: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

None of these codes has anything to do with “TUI”. The callsign in particular recalls the time when the airline was still called Blue Scandinavia, and all three codes have survived the later renamings. If a flight with BLX shows up on the tracker, it is the Swedish company, no matter how similar the aircraft looks to its sisters. Why flight number and callsign look different on trackers is explained in the article on the difference between callsign and flight number. You can find the system behind them in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

From Transwede via Britannia Nordic to TUI

The history of TUI fly Nordic goes back to the mid-1980s, and it has almost as many names as aircraft.

The British roots are no coincidence. How closely the line is tied to the UK’s charter flying history is shown by the page on Britannia Airways, the predecessor of TUI Airways. More exotic types also date from the Transwede and Blue Scandinavia era, by the way: in the mid-1990s, two Lockheed L-1011 TriStars and three McDonnell Douglas MD-83s briefly flew for the airline.

When the TUI Group decided in 2015 to have all five airlines appear under the TUI name, they stayed legally independent, each with its own air operator certificate. That is why they still have different codes and registrations today. By 2017, most aircraft were flying in the new group livery.

The fleet: 737 MAX 8 and one Dreamliner

The fleet is tiny. According to fleet overviews as of 2025, it looks roughly like this:

Type	Number (approx.)	Seats	Use	Tracker code
Boeing 737 MAX 8	3	189	Europe, Canary Islands, Turkey, Cyprus	B38M
Boeing 787-9	1	around 345, two classes	Long haul	B789

Treat the table as a snapshot. The TUI group shuffles aircraft back and forth between its airlines, and in leisure traffic sister companies also help out at peak times. In 2021, for example, TUI Airways’ Dreamliner came to Sweden, while the last 737-800 went back to TUI Airways shortly afterward.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is the backbone. On short and medium haul, TUI fly Nordic has been an all-MAX operator since late 2021. The Dreamliner is a Boeing 787-9, the middle version of the family. The aircraft previously flew as G-TUIK with TUI Airways and was registered in Sweden as SE-RFZ in September 2021. With that, the airline returned to long-haul after a break of around a year. All current types come from Boeing.

The former fleet

For your logbook from earlier years, three Boeing types are interesting that no longer fly for TUI fly Nordic today:

• Boeing 737-800: in service since 1998, around 15 to 18 aircraft in total, never more than seven at the same time. The last one, SE-RFX, flew from Gran Canaria to Stockholm in November 2021 and then went to TUI Airways.
• Boeing 767-300ER: for many years the airline’s long-haul jet. The last two left the fleet at the end of 2020.
• Boeing 757-200: in service in two phases between 1998 and 2011.

If you have photos from that time, keep them safe. How to look up the age of individual aircraft is explained in the article How old is this aircraft?.

737 MAX 8 or 737-800? How to tell the generations apart

Now that the last 737-800 has left the fleet, every current short-haul 737 of TUI fly Nordic is a MAX 8. On older photos and at vacation airports where other airlines still use 737-800s, a close look is still worthwhile:

The guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart provides more details. With the Dreamliner it is simpler: serrated engine trailing edges, strongly upward-curved wings and a cockpit with only four windows give away the 787 from afar. How to tell it apart from the larger 777 is covered in the article Telling the Boeing 777 and 787 apart.

How to recognize TUI fly Nordic

The aircraft wear the TUI Group’s group design: blue-and-white paint, the smile logo and the “TUI” titles on the fuselage. All five TUI airlines share exactly this look. Even the Dreamliner is not a unique feature, because TUI Airways and TUI fly Netherlands also fly the 787. At vacation airports the sisters often stand right next to each other.

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

Airline	Country	Registration prefix
TUI fly Nordic	Sweden	SE-
TUIfly	Germany	D-
TUI Airways	United Kingdom	G-
TUI fly Belgium	Belgium	OO-
TUI fly Netherlands	Netherlands	PH-

The registration decides. A 737 MAX 8 in TUI colors at Arlanda is mostly a Swedish one, but you can only be sure with the SE- prefix on the fuselage. According to fleet lists, the airline’s MAX aircraft carried registrations from the SE-RN.. series, and the Dreamliner flies as SE-RFZ. How to read registrations and which prefix belongs to which country is explained in the articles Understanding aircraft registrations and Aircraft country codes.

Nordic competition

In Scandinavia there are two more big leisure airlines that bring the same vacationers to the same beaches: Novair from Sweden and Sunclass Airlines from Denmark. Both wear their own liveries and belong to other groups. The risk of mix-ups is highest when you only have the tail in the picture.

Spotting TUI fly Nordic

Arlanda and Landvetter

Your best chances are at the two bases. At Arlanda, the official spotter hill on Navigatörsvägen is a good starting point, with parking and a view of landings on 19L and takeoffs from 01R. Which runway is currently used depends on the wind; the article on the runway direction in use at the airport helps with planning.

At Arlanda you meet TUI fly Nordic among the big names: SAS, Norwegian and Ryanair are clearly more common here. Because the Swedish TUI has only four aircraft, every sighting is a small win. At Landvetter the traffic is more manageable, so the TUI rotations stand out more there.

Other Nordic airports

For the TUI tour operators in Norway, Denmark and Finland, TUI fly Nordic also departs from Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki. In Copenhagen the classic Flyvergrillen is worthwhile, with tips in the guide Plane spotting at Copenhagen Kastrup. There are also departures from smaller Swedish airports like Malmö, Norrköping or Umeå, usually only on a few days per week.

At the vacation destinations

You also meet the airline in the south, for example on Gran Canaria. At Gran Canaria Airport you photograph from Ojos de Garza beach, and the guide Plane spotting in the Canary Islands introduces more islands. The SE- aircraft also show up at Palma Airport, on Rhodes and in Antalya, often next to the sisters from Germany, the UK and the Benelux countries.

In the north, looking at the light is especially worthwhile: in winter the sun barely rises above the forest, in summer it stays up until late in the evening. How you plan the sun position for your photo spot decides which side of the runway is well lit. For the cold season there are also tips in the post Plane spotting in winter.

Common mix-ups

• Taking every TUI Dreamliner for TUI fly Nordic – TUI Airways and TUI fly Netherlands also fly the 787. The SE- registration decides.
• Confusing the Swedish TUI with TUIfly – the German company flies with D- registrations and has no long-haul jets.
• Equating “TUI” in the name with the code – TUI fly Nordic uses 6B and BLX, not TUI.
• Taking BLUESCAN for another airline’s callsign – the callsign has belonged to this airline since the Blue Scandinavia years.
• Equating Britannia Nordic with Britannia Airways – the Swedish company was a separate offshoot with its own flight operations.
• Looking for the 767 or 737-800 – both types left the fleet in 2020 and 2021.

Conclusion

TUI fly Nordic is the smallest but most history-rich leisure airline of the TUI Group. Transwede became Blue Scandinavia in 1996, Britannia Nordic two years later and finally TUIfly Nordic. Today the airline flies a handful of 737 MAX 8s to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands and a single 787-9 to long-haul destinations. For spotters, the appeal lies in picking the few SE- aircraft out of the sea of blue-and-white TUI jets. The SE- registration, the ICAO code BLX and an open ear for “BLUESCAN” on the radio are enough for that.