Onur Air

Anyone standing at a German airport in summer between the mid-1990s and the end of the 2010s could hardly miss Onur Air. Year after year, the airline from Istanbul brought vacationers to the Turkish Riviera and families to their home regions – with A320s and A321s, at times with big A300s and slender MD-88s, later even with A330s. At the end of 2020, it was over. This page shows how Onur Air came about, which aircraft it flew, what the 2005 headlines were about and how to recognize the airline in old photos.

Onur Air at a glance

Onur Air was a private Turkish airline that flew from 1992 to the end of 2020. Its home was initially Istanbul Atatürk Airport and, from April 2019, the new Istanbul Airport. An important second base was in Antalya, the gateway to the Turkish Riviera. The name means “honor” in Turkish, and in everyday use the airline liked to write it as one word: OnurAir or onurair.

The business stood on three legs. The largest part was charter flights for tour operators, mainly between central Europe and Turkey’s vacation regions. In addition came scheduled flights within Turkey and some international routes, including to Germany and the Middle East. The third leg was leasing aircraft with crew to other airlines, so-called wet lease. What that means exactly is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

For spotters, Onur Air is an archive topic today – but a rewarding one. Hardly any other Turkish airline flew so many different Airbus series in such a short time, and at German airports it was a regular for decades.

The history in stages

Onur Air was founded on April 14, 1992, originally in the orbit of the Turkish tour operator TK Air Travel. It took off just one month later: the first flight went to Ercan in northern Cyprus with an Airbus A320. The fleet grew quickly, and by the end of 1995 nine aircraft were already in service.

In the mid-1990s, the Ten Tour Group came in and took over the airline completely – sources variously give 1994 as the start of the stake and 1996 as the year of the takeover. The new owner brought more solid financing, additional Airbuses and the build-up of a domestic network. Owner Hamit Cankut Bagana became the face of the airline.

At the end of the 1990s, Onur Air had to get through a more difficult phase: the fleet was reduced to 13 aircraft in 1998 and nine in 1999. After that things looked up again, and in the 2000s the airline was among the big names in Turkey traffic. The article Charter flights vs. scheduled flights puts the difference between charter and scheduled operations, between which Onur Air constantly shifted, into context.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 8Q: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards – for example on the last scheduled flight, 8Q351 from Kuwait.
• ICAO code OHY: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign ONUR AIR: this is how crews identified themselves on the radio.

Since the end of the airline, these codes appear only in historical sources. If you find “8Q” or “OHY” in an old logbook, you can regard the attribution to Onur Air as fairly certain – but check the date, because codes are sometimes reassigned after a company ends.

The Onur Air fleet

Onur Air relied on Airbus from the start. The A320 was the first aircraft and stayed in the fleet until the end. Around it, however, the picture changed often: widebody A300s for peak season, MD-80 jets from McDonnell Douglas for smaller routes, later various A321 versions and finally the A330.

Type	Period (approx.)	Use	Spotter note
Airbus A320-200	1992 to 2020	Charter and scheduled	The airline’s first type, in the fleet until the end
Airbus A321-100	from the mid-1990s, some until the end	Charter	First production version of the A321, shorter range than the -200
Airbus A321-200	from 2003 to 2020	Charter and scheduled	The most important type of the late years
Airbus A321neo	2019 to 2020	Charter	Only two examples, taken over from the fleet of the bankrupt WOW air
Airbus A300B2/B4	from 1996/1997 to 2006	Widebody charter	Early widebody Airbuses for vacation peaks
Airbus A300-600	2000s to 2013	Charter and wet lease	Configured with over 300 seats, last A300 retired in April 2013
McDonnell Douglas MD-88	1997 to 2011	Charter	Rear-mounted engines and T-tail
McDonnell Douglas MD-83	1997 or 2005 to 2010	Charter	Some aircraft then went to other operators
Airbus A330-300	2015 to 2021	Charter and wet lease	Longer fuselage of the A330 family
Airbus A330-200	2016 to 2021	Charter and wet lease	Some used for Saudi Arabian Airlines

The figures on periods and numbers differ somewhat depending on the source, so they should be understood here as approximations. A special note for type fans: according to fleet overviews, the two A321-100s still standing in Istanbul when operations ceased were among the very first A321s built, from 1993.

For identifying old pictures, the guide How to tell the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart helps. For the widebody jets of the late years, take a look at the article A330 or A340? – the number of engines tells you right away that a twinjet A330 is in front of you.

Onur Air in Germany

Germany was Onur Air’s most important international market. Over the years, destinations included Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Leipzig/Halle and Erfurt-Weimar, plus further seasonal destinations. The scheduled timetable of the last years included Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn.

The flights served two groups: package vacationers on their way to Antalya, Dalaman or the Aegean, and people with Turkish roots visiting family and friends. Especially during the summer holidays, Onur Air jets therefore showed up at many German airports several times a week. If you stood back then on the observation deck in Düsseldorf, the deck in Cologne/Bonn or the observation deck in Stuttgart, you very likely have Onur Air pictures in your archive.

Onur Air also operated charter service in Switzerland, for example in Zurich. If you photographed there in the 2000s, you may find the airline in your own archive as well.

The 2005 headlines

In May 2005, Onur Air made the news. On May 12 and 13, the Dutch authorities and the German Federal Aviation Office (Luftfahrt-Bundesamt) revoked the airline’s permission to enter after inspections found significant defects on aircraft. On May 14, Switzerland and France followed. For thousands of vacationers who had booked with Onur Air, the tour operators had to arrange replacements at short notice.

Turkey initially responded with a countermeasure and revoked German airlines’ landing permission. After protests from the German Foreign Office, this step was withdrawn. Onur Air pointed out that it had been recognized several times by Airbus and Boeing for its maintenance processes. After talks, the Netherlands allowed the airline to fly again from May 24, 2005, and Germany also lifted the ban after inspections. From July 4 to 6, 2005, the review was provisionally concluded with a final meeting in Antalya.

Wet lease and the operations for Saudi Arabian Airlines

Part of the Onur Air fleet was not flying under its own flight number at all but on behalf of other companies. This was especially visible with Saudia: Onur Air flew A300-600s and later A330s for the Saudi airline.

Two of these operations ended in hull losses in which nobody was killed. On May 1, 2012, an A300-600 with the registration TC-OAG had to land in Jeddah without the nose gear extended after a positioning flight without passengers; the ten crew members were unharmed. On May 21, 2018, an A330-200 (TC-OCH) on its way from Medina to Dhaka was hit: after hydraulic problems, it also landed in Jeddah without the nose gear. During the evacuation, one passenger was seriously injured and 52 others slightly. Neither aircraft was repaired.

Between 2009 and 2014, two A320s with the registrations TC-KLA and TC-KLB were also used for the Russian airline Kogalymavia, in which Cankut Bagana held a stake. How leasing models work in general is shown in the article Aircraft leasing explained.

Other incidents

In almost three decades, there were some further events besides the two Jeddah accidents that appear in accident statistics:

• June 17, 2003, Groningen: The MD-88 TC-ONP aborted takeoff because of problems with the elevator and overran the end of the runway. The 149 people on board were unharmed, and the aircraft was repaired.
• January 1, 2007, Istanbul: On the same MD-88, a cargo hold door popped open in Istanbul, and baggage fell onto the runway. Nobody was injured.
• September 7, 2007: An A321 on a charter flight from Dalaman to Birmingham lost cabin pressure and made an unscheduled landing in Istanbul.
• September 26, 2013, Deauville: An A321-200 (TC-OBZ) descended far too low on approach, the crew went around after warnings and landed safely shortly afterward.
• January 26, 2019, Antalya: In a thunderstorm, flying ground vehicles hit the A321-200 TC-OEB so badly that it was written off.

How to recognize Onur Air

The most reliable way to identify Onur Air aircraft is the “Onur Air” or “onurair” titles on the fuselage and the Turkish registration with TC-. Many of the airline’s aircraft carried registrations beginning with TC-O – that is a good indicator, but not proof, because after a sale the registration may live on with another operator or vice versa.

The type helps with dating: an MD-88 points to the period until about 2011, an A300 to the years until 2013, an A330 or even an A321neo to the late 2010s. Be careful with wet lease flights: an Onur Air aircraft could fly under another airline’s flight number, and some aircraft carried additional markings of the customer during such phases. The article on hybrid and mixed liveries helps classify such mixed forms.

The end: from the pandemic to license revocation

Onur Air was already financially weakened before 2020. With the collapse of air traffic due to the COVID pandemic, the situation became critical: from March 2020, many aircraft stood idle, and sale attempts failed. On the morning of November 14, 2020, 8Q351 from Kuwait landed in Istanbul as the last scheduled flight. From December 2020, flight operations were completely suspended, including at the Bulgarian subsidiary Holiday Europe.

What remained were eight older A320s and A321s, stored in Istanbul and Antalya. Some aircraft were scrapped for parts in Turkey, and the whereabouts of others are unclear. How Onur Air’s collapse compares with other airline failures is shown in the article on big airline collapses in Europe. The Istanbul competitor Atlasglobal, which gave up operations as early as 2020, fared similarly, by the way.

Onur Air in everyday spotting today

For your logbook, Onur Air is mainly an archive topic. If you photographed at German vacation airports in the 1990s and 2000s, you will often find the airline’s A300s, MD-88s or early A321s in old pictures. It is worth digitizing these shots and labeling them cleanly: type, registration, place and date turn a memory photo into a complete entry.

Tracking down the whereabouts of individual aircraft is also exciting. Using the serial number and registration, life histories can often be followed without gaps – how that works is shown in the guide How old is this aircraft?. The two A321neos, for example, came in 2019 from the fleet of the Icelandic WOW air and stayed only briefly.

The Turkish leisure airline scene is lively even without Onur Air. If you want to photograph flights to the Riviera in Germany today, you will meet SunExpress, Corendon Airlines, Freebird Airlines or Pegasus Airlines. And if you travel to Istanbul yourself, the guide Plane spotting in Istanbul has tips for the spots around the city.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking Onur Air was a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines – it was a private company and a direct competitor of Turkish Airlines in domestic traffic.
• Seeing Onur Air as a pure low-cost carrier – the core business was charter flights for tour operators, supplemented by scheduled service and wet lease.
• Logging the 2005 entry ban as permanent – the bans were lifted after a few weeks and with conditions.
• Confusing the last flight with the license revocation – the last flight was in November 2020, and the operating license was not revoked until 2022.
• Thinking every A330 on a Saudia operation is a Saudia aircraft – some came from the Onur Air fleet and carried Turkish registrations.
• Thinking Holiday Europe was an independent competitor – the Bulgarian airline was a stake of Onur Air and flew with its aircraft.

Conclusion

Onur Air stands for almost three decades of Turkish leisure flying: started in 1992 with a single A320, grown big with the Turkey boom, shaped by A300s, MD-88s and later A330s on wet lease. In between came the 2005 headlines, two nose gear landings in Jeddah and an end that dragged on through the pandemic until 2022. For spotters, looking back is worthwhile – at summer photos from German airports, at clean registrations and at the aircraft that kept flying elsewhere after Onur Air.