As reported a few months ago, TUI fly Belgium intended to add 4 Airbus A320s leased to SmartLynx to its fleet during Summer season 2019, but this number has been increased to 6, and one Airbus A321 has been added after the grounding of TUI’s 4 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
The Belgian leisure airline, facing Boeing 737 MAX grounding for now nearly 125 days, had to secure seats for its passengers, in view of this unexpected situation.
In January 2019, Aviation24.be already reported that the Belgian airline has had the help of SmartLynx for 3 years and signed a contract for the next 3 summer seasons as well.
The initial contract was for 4 Airbus A320s, but due to MAX grounding, TUI fly had to request more A320s coming from Estonia. Between end March and yesterday, 6 Airbus A320s have arrived to fly for TUI fly: 3 operating from Brussels and the remaining ones from Charleroi. These are registered ES-SAK, ES-SAM, ES-SAO, ES-SAQ, ES-SAV and brand new in the fleet, just coming from Mexico: ES-SAT.
TUI has requested another Airbus A320 family aircraft, this time an Airbus A321 registered YL-LDB.
They sport an all-white livery, with red TUI stickers on most aircraft.
