Pegasus Airlines

When an A321neo with a TC registration taxis to the runway at a German airport, chances are good that it is Pegasus. The Turkish low-cost carrier has long been an everyday sight along the Rhine, the Ruhr and the Neckar – and that is exactly why a closer look pays off: behind the uniform appearance are three Airbus variants, a small remainder of Boeings, a big Boeing order and, since October 2026, an entire Czech airline group. This page shows you how to identify Pegasus with confidence.

Pegasus Airlines at a glance

Pegasus Airlines is a Turkish low-cost carrier headquartered in Kurtköy in Istanbul’s Pendik district. Its home base is Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW) on the Asian side of the city. There are also other bases in Turkey, such as Ankara, Antalya, Izmir, Dalaman and Bodrum.

The history begins surprisingly Irish: Pegasus was founded in 1989 as a charter airline, and besides two Turkish companies, the founders included Aer Lingus. Flight operations began in April 1990 with two Boeing 737-400s. A few years later the Irish withdrew, and Pegasus became fully Turkish.

The real turning point came in 2005. Esas Holding took over the airline and within a short time converted it from a charter to a low-cost model. From the end of 2005, scheduled domestic flights were added. Since April 2013, the shares have traded on Borsa Istanbul, and Esas Holding remains the majority owner. In 2024, Pegasus carried around 37.4 million passengers.

Like Ryanair or Wizz Air, Pegasus belongs to no alliance. Unlike many European low-cost carriers, however, Pegasus does use Istanbul as a connecting point: if you want to get from Germany to the Middle East or Central Asia, you often change planes at SAW with Pegasus.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code PC: appears in the flight number, so on the departure board, on the ticket and in the airport’s schedule.
• ICAO code PGT: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on most flight trackers.
• Callsign SUNTURK: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

For beginners, the callsign is the biggest stumbling block, because it has nothing to do with the name Pegasus. But if you hear “Sunturk” on a scanner, you really do have a Pegasus aircraft in front of you. Why flight number, ICAO code and callsign often look so different is explained in the guides on IATA and ICAO codes and on the difference between callsign and flight number.

The fleet: almost all Airbus A320 family

Over the past ten years, Pegasus has consistently focused on the new generation of the Airbus A320 family. At the end of 2012, the airline was the first Turkish carrier to order the A320neo family – at the time up to 100 aircraft, 75 of them firm. Today that order shapes the picture. According to the Pegasus fleet overview, the fleet looked like this on March 31, 2026:

Type	Number	Seats	Spotter tip
Airbus A321neo	68	239	Largest type and backbone of the fleet
Airbus A320neo	46	186	Big engines, shorter fuselage
Airbus A320ceo	6	180	Older generation, only a few left
Boeing 737-800	9	189	Last Boeings in the current fleet
Boeing 737 MAX 10	100 on order	–	Not in service yet

The seat counts come from public fleet tables; Pegasus flies in a single class throughout. After the Smartwings takeover in October 2026, an industry service already listed 72 A321neos and 133 Pegasus aircraft in total. The numbers change constantly – use the table as a guide, not as an exact snapshot of today.

The Airbus A321neo is now the most important type. With 239 seats, it is especially densely configured for a low-cost carrier and well suited to the strong demand between Germany and Turkey. Alongside it flies the shorter A320neo. The few classic first-generation A320s and the Boeing 737-800s are phase-out models – if you don’t have them in your logbook yet, now is a good time.

The next chapter is where it gets exciting: in December 2024, Pegasus placed a firm order for 100 Boeing 737 MAX 10s and secured options on 100 more. According to industry reports, the first aircraft are planned from 2028. That brings Boeing back in a big way after years of Airbus dominance.

A320neo, A321neo or A320ceo? How to tell them apart

Because almost all Pegasus aircraft are painted the same, it comes down to the fuselage and the engines. Two questions are usually enough: how long is the fuselage – and how big are the engines?

On the A320ceo, the first generation, the engines are visibly smaller. A reliable feature is therefore the engines, not the wingtips – older A320s can also fly with the upward-curved sharklets. And if a Boeing does show up: the 737-800 has a tapered nose, a lower-slung landing gear and engines with a slightly flattened underside. How to tell the two manufacturers apart in general is shown in the guide telling Airbus and Boeing apart.

How to recognize Pegasus

On the fuselage are the “Pegasus” titles, and on the tail you see the brand logo with the winged horse that gives the airline its name. The livery is largely uniform across the fleet – so deviations are the real highlights. One example: the A321neo TC-RDP has worn a special livery since September 2023 for the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey. You can find such designs deliberately with the tips in finding special liveries.

The second sure feature is the registration. All Pegasus aircraft carry the Turkish prefix TC-. That already sets Pegasus apart from European low-cost carriers from afar. However, Turkish Airlines, SunExpress and Corendon Airlines also fly with TC registrations. So the prefix tells you the country, not the airline. More on country prefixes is explained in the article on country markings on aircraft.

Pegasus and Smartwings: a new group

In December 2025, Pegasus signed an agreement to take over the Czech Smartwings group, which also includes the Czech Airlines brand. After regulatory approvals, Pegasus announced the closing on October 1, 2026. The purchase was made through the Dutch subsidiary Pegasus Europe – a way to comply with European rules on airline ownership and control. According to industry reports, the final purchase price was around €142 million, slightly below the figure named when the agreement was signed.

For you as a spotter, little changes at first: Smartwings keeps flying under the Smartwings and CSA Czech Airlines brands, with its own air operator certificates in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The fleet there consists mainly of Boeing 737s, supplemented by a few Airbus A220-300s and A320s. Registrations, ICAO codes and liveries remain different.

Feature	Pegasus Airlines	Smartwings (Czech Republic)
ICAO code	PGT	TVS
Registration prefix	TC-	OK-
Main fleet	Airbus A320neo family	Boeing 737
Home base	Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen	Prague

Pegasus has had stakes outside Turkey before: from 2013, Air Manas flew in Kyrgyzstan under the name Pegasus Asia, and between 2011 and 2013 there was the joint project Air Berlin Turkey with Air Berlin for traffic between Germany and Turkey.

Spotting Pegasus in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Pegasus is one of the airlines with the densest network between the German-speaking region and Turkey. Destinations served in Germany include Berlin, Bremen, Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne/Bonn, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart. In Austria, Vienna, Graz and Salzburg are in the network, in Switzerland Zurich, Basel and Geneva. Which routes are served in which season changes – so check the current schedule before every trip (as of October 2026).

You see Pegasus especially often at airports with a large Turkish community and heavy holiday traffic. Good starting points are the observation deck at Düsseldorf Airport, the observation deck at Cologne/Bonn Airport, the observation deck in Stuttgart and the terrace in Nuremberg. In Austria, the observation deck at Vienna Airport is worth a visit, in Switzerland spectator terrace B in Zurich.

On the German apron, you often meet Pegasus next to other Turkey specialists. The comparison helps with sorting: SunExpress and Corendon fly mainly Boeing 737s, Pegasus mainly Airbus. Turkish Airlines, on the other hand, you recognize by its own livery and the tracker code THY. In general holiday traffic, Condor and Eurowings also fly to Turkey.

Plan your vantage point with light and wind in mind: the guide to the runway direction in use at an airport and the article on the sun position at a photo spot help you with that.

Common mix-ups

• Taking every TC aircraft for Pegasus – Turkish Airlines, SunExpress and Corendon also fly with Turkish registrations.
• Assigning the callsign wrongly – “SUNTURK” is Pegasus, even if it sounds more like SunExpress.
• Confusing the A320neo and A321neo – the fuselage length decides, not the engines.
• Logging an A320ceo as a neo – the first generation has much smaller engines.
• Entering Smartwings as Pegasus – despite the shared owner, Smartwings flies with its own code, its own livery and OK registrations.
• Confusing SAW and IST – Pegasus is based at Sabiha Gökçen, Turkish Airlines at Istanbul Airport.

Conclusion

Pegasus Airlines is the low-cost carrier that ties Germany and Turkey especially closely together. On the apron it looks uniform, but if you look closely, you find A321neos, A320neos, the last A320ceos and 737-800s – and later the 737 MAX 10. With the registration, the tracker code and a look at the engines, every Pegasus sighting becomes a clean entry in your logbook.