Güneş Ekspress Havacılık A.Ş., doing business as SunExpress, is a Turkish airline based in Antalya. It operates scheduled and chartered passenger flights to various destinations in Europe, Asia and North Africa.

The airline was established in October 1989 and started operations in April 1990 with a charter service between Antalya and Frankfurt. SunExpress was founded as a joint venture between Turkish Airlines and the Lufthansa Group/Condor Flugdienst. In 1995, the Lufthansa Group transferred its SunExpress shares to Condor. All tourist flights operate under a single unit. In February 2007, all Condor shares were retaken by the Lufthansa Group as Condor was acquired by Thomas Cook AG (now Thomas Cook Group).

SunExpress is currently a joint venture between Turkish Airlines and the Lufthansa Group, each owning 50 percent of the airline. With 886 employees the company is the largest employer in Antalya. SunExpress counts 393 employees in Izmir, 299 in Istanbul, 178 in Ankara, 42 in Anatolian cities and 334 in Frankfurt, Germany. The total SunExpress workforce number is 2.132 with other domestic bases.

Operating touristic charter flights between Europe – specifically Germany – and Antalya for a long time, SunExpress became the first private airline company to offer international scheduled flights from Turkey with its first Antalya-Frankfurt flight in 2001.

Increasing its scheduled flights rapidly day-by-day, SunExpress opened its second base in İzmir and started to operate domestic flights in 2006. With this launch, SunExpress became the first airline company to connect İzmir with Anatolian cities with direct flights in Turkey.

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Wikipedia