TUI airlines

A blue-and-white jet with a red smile on the fuselage taxis to the runway in Palma, behind it a second one that looks exactly the same, and a third waits at the gate. To passengers these are simply “the TUI planes.” For you as a spotter, they can be three different airlines from three countries. The TUI Group operates five leisure airlines that have looked almost identical since the rebranding of the 2010s – with their own codes, their own certificates and their own registrations. This page shows you who is behind the smile and how to assign every sighting to the right operator.

From mining conglomerate to leisure flight group

TUI’s path to becoming an airline group is unusual. Today’s TUI AG goes back to Preussag, an industrial and mining conglomerate founded in 1923. At the end of the 1990s, Preussag parted with its steel division, took over the Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd in 1997 and step by step transformed itself into a travel group. In 2002 the new name TUI AG followed; its headquarters is in Hanover.

With Hapag-Lloyd came an airline into the group: Hapag-Lloyd Flug, which had been carrying vacationers to the Mediterranean since 1973. The other airlines joined through tour operators. In the UK, the takeover of the Thomson group in 2000 brought in the former Britannia Airways, and in 2007 the merger with First Choice brought the second big British leisure airline. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the operators Jetair and Arke built airlines of their own, and in Sweden the route led via Blue Scandinavia and Britannia Nordic.

For a long time these airlines flew under their own names and colors. If you stood in Antalya or on Gran Canaria in the 2000s, you saw yellow Hapagfly jets, Thomson and First Choice aircraft, Jetairfly and Arkefly side by side without suspecting they belonged to the same group. Only after the full merger of TUI AG and the British TUI Travel in December 2014 did the group push the brand through. Between 2015 and 2017, all five airlines received the TUI name and the blue-and-white design.

The five airlines at a glance

The group is not a single flight operation but an association. Each airline has its own air operator certificate and its own IATA and ICAO codes, and flies with registrations from its home country. The table shows you the key features at a glance.

Notably, several ICAO codes and callsigns date from before the TUI name. JAF recalls Jetairfly, TOM and TOMJET recall Thomson, BLX and BLUESCAN recall Blue Scandinavia. That is handy for you, because the code in the ADS-B signal reveals the operator even when you can’t read the registration yet. How codes and callsigns relate is explained in the articles IATA and ICAO codes explained and Callsign and flight number.

TUIfly: the German sister

TUIfly is based in Langenhagen, right at Hanover Airport, and is the group’s German leisure airline. It was formed in 2007 from Hapagfly and the low-cost carrier Hapag-Lloyd Express and today flies exclusively the Boeing 737-800 and the 737 MAX 8. Its bases are in Hanover, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf. During the COVID crisis, TUIfly shrank considerably and gave up locations like Cologne/Bonn and Bremen – D- registrations there have become correspondingly rarer.

TUI Airways: the giant from the UK

TUI Airways is the group’s largest airline. Its roots reach via Thomson and First Choice back to Britannia Airways, which in 1968 was the first European airline to fly the Boeing 737-200. Today TUI Airways operates most of the group’s Dreamliners: besides 737-800s and 737 MAX 8s, it flies the Boeing 787-8 and the longer 787-9. Its aircraft depart from numerous British airports, including London Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham.

TUI fly Belgium: the one with the Embraer

TUI fly Belgium flew as Jetairfly until 2016 and is based in Zaventem at Brussels Airport. It received the group’s first 737 MAX 8 in January 2018 and is the only TUI airline with the Embraer E195-E2. It has since given up long-haul flying with the 767 and 787. Besides Brussels, its bases include Ostend-Bruges and Antwerp.

TUI fly Netherlands: Dreamliners from Schiphol

TUI fly Netherlands was formed in 2005 as Arkefly and in October 2015 was the first group airline with the TUI name. The small fleet consists of 737 MAX 8s and 787-8s, with which it also flies to the Caribbean. Home is Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, plus Eindhoven and Rotterdam/The Hague. For long-haul, TUI fly Netherlands has been the group’s only Benelux airline since TUI fly Belgium withdrew from it in 2025.

TUI fly Nordic: the little brother from Sweden

TUI fly Nordic is the group’s smallest airline. It goes back to Transwede and Blue Scandinavia, launched in 1996, and flies from Stockholm Arlanda and Gothenburg Landvetter mainly for the Scandinavian TUI operators. According to fleet overviews from 2025, the fleet consisted of only a handful of aircraft: a few 737 MAX 8s and one 787-9. In central Europe, an SE- registration in TUI livery therefore turns up almost only at holiday airports.

A virtual airline with five certificates

For a long time the five airlines largely worked on their own. Now the TUI Group bundles central functions: aircraft procurement and financing, engineering and maintenance, IT and long-haul planning. The group itself speaks of a “virtual airline” that acts together where it pays off and keeps local differences where they make sense. Taken together, according to TUI, the five companies would be the seventh-largest airline operation in Europe.

For you at the fence, this has two visible consequences. First, the fleet is strongly standardized: since 2013 the group has ordered a total of 70 Boeing 737 MAXs to replace older aircraft, and relies uniformly on the 787 for long-haul. Second, aircraft occasionally move within the group. A 737 can begin its life with a G- registration and later keep flying as D- or OO-. That is why it pays to note the full registration for every sighting – the article Understanding aircraft registrations offers tips.

The airlines work mainly for the group’s tour operators but also sell flight-only tickets. In everyday operations that blurs the old line between charter and scheduled flights. What still separates the two terms today is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

The fleet: Boeing, Boeing and one Embraer

The TUI airlines’ type picture is straightforward. According to TUI Group, the total fleet in fiscal year 2025 comprised about 125 aircraft. Concrete numbers per type change constantly, so the following overview is a rough snapshot.

The 737-800 was the workhorse of all TUI airlines for many years. At TUI fly Netherlands it has already disappeared, and at the others its share shrinks with every new 737 MAX 8. For some airlines the larger 737 MAX 10 is on order. How to tell the 737 generations apart on the aircraft is shown in the article Telling Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

For long-haul, TUI relies on the Boeing 787. The British introduced a Dreamliner in 2013 as the first airline in their country, and Jetairfly followed in December of the same year. With TUI fly Belgium’s withdrawal from long-haul in 2025, the Dreamliners are now spread across TUI Airways, TUI fly Netherlands and TUI fly Nordic. The manufacturer page for Boeing puts both families in context.

What has disappeared from the fleets

For your archive, the retired types are exciting. The Boeing 757-200 was long a typical Thomson and First Choice aircraft. The Boeing 767-300ER flew at TUI Airways until November 2023, at TUI fly Belgium until 2022 and at TUI fly Netherlands until November 2024 – ending the 767 era in the group. Jetairfly’s Embraer E190 left the fleet in 2023. Looking further back, you find at Hapag-Lloyd Flug the Boeing 727, the Airbus A310 and the A300 in yellow-and-white colors.

How to identify the right TUI airline

Because the livery is nearly the same on all five airlines, you have to work with other features. These steps turn “some TUI” into a clean sighting.

Especially in summer, leisure airlines like to lease extra capacity. Then the departures board shows an X3 or BY flight number, but at the gate stands an aircraft in completely different colors. What counts for your logbook is the actual operator – more in the article Wet lease explained.

The TUI design and its predecessors

The current design arrived step by step: TUIfly changed from yellow to blue in 2014, and the other airlines followed with their new names between 2015 and 2017. Since 2016, TUIfly has had only “TUI” on the fuselage instead of “TUIfly.” Several striking liveries disappeared with it – the yellow of Hapag-Lloyd and Hapagfly, Thomson Airways’ paint scheme, the colors of Jetairfly and Arkefly. How such changeovers work and why transitional liveries are so coveted is shown in the article When airlines change their design.

Photos from that period are valuable archive pieces today. If you add older sightings retroactively, assign them to the historical operators: Hapag-Lloyd Flug and Hapag-Lloyd Express in Germany, Britannia Airways and First Choice Airways in the United Kingdom. For special liveries in the TUI group, the guide Finding special liveries is worthwhile.

Where to see the TUI airlines best

In Germany, Hanover is the first address: TUIfly is based here, and from the observation deck at Hanover Airport you see D- registrations especially often. TUIfly is also part of the summer picture in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and at the observation deck in Düsseldorf. More about the Hanover location is in the guide Plane spotting in Hanover.

For TUI Airways, the road leads to the United Kingdom. The Runway Visitor Park in Manchester is one of the best-known places where you can see 737s and 787s with G- registrations. In Belgium, the Steenokkerzeel spotter zone in Brussels offers good chances for the Belgian jets including the E195-E2, and in the Netherlands the spotting place at the Polderbaan in Schiphol.

It gets really exciting at the holiday airports. In Mallorca, the Canary Islands, Greece or Turkey, several TUI airlines often come together in a single morning. At Palma de Mallorca Airport and at Playa Honda beach on Lanzarote, with a little luck you can collect three or four different country prefixes in TUI livery in one day. How to combine that with a family vacation is shown in the article Plane spotting on vacation.

TUI compared with the big network groups

The TUI airlines differ fundamentally from groups like the Lufthansa Group, Air France-KLM or the International Airlines Group. There, network airlines with hubs and connecting traffic are at the center, alliance memberships and codeshares included. The TUI airlines, by contrast, fly nonstop from many regional airports directly to the holiday destination, without an alliance and without a classic hub.

The role within the group is different too. At the TUI Group, the airlines are one link in a chain of tour operators, hotels and cruises. They mainly supply the seats for package holidays. That explains the strongly seasonal schedule: in summer you see TUI at many German airports several times a day, in winter the traffic shifts toward the Canary Islands, Egypt and long-haul destinations.

Conclusion

For spotters, the TUI airlines are a prime example that a livery is not yet a sighting. Under the shared smile fly five independent leisure airlines from Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden – with their own codes, their own callsigns and their own registrations. The fleet is manageable with 737s and 787s but in transition: the 737-800 is making way for the MAX, and the 767 and Belgian Dreamliners are already history. If you read registration and callsign together, you turn every blue-and-white jet into a clean logbook entry.