Sundair Offers Funded A320 Type Rating And Accessible Jet Entry

Sundair GmbH is a small German leisure and charter airline that flies Airbus A320-family jets from bases in Berlin, Bremen and Dresden to holiday destinations around the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands and the Red Sea. It is not a legacy network carrier, and it is not a large low-cost operator. It sits in a specific niche: a lean, tour-operator-focused carrier that sells most of its seats through package holidays. For a pilot, that identity shapes almost everything that follows in this guide, from the type of flying (short and medium-haul, high summer intensity) to the employment model (company contracts rather than a union collective agreement).

The company was founded in 2016 by Marcos Rossello and operated its first revenue flight on 27 September 2017, according to airline history records and the founder's own public statements. Its registered headquarters are in Stralsund, a Hanseatic city in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, well away from its main flying base at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER). Rossello remains the driving figure behind the airline as CEO and managing director, and in 2024 to 2025 he also acquired the trademark rights to the dormant Air Berlin brand, a development widely reported in the German aviation press.

A pivotal corporate change came on 30 May 2023, when the German tour operator Schauinsland-Reisen acquired a majority stake in both Sundair and its Croatian sister airline, Fly Air41 Airways, according to reporting by CAPA (Centre for Aviation). That ownership link is significant for pilots: it ties Sundair's flying to a tour operator's seat demand, which supports schedule stability during the summer season but also concentrates the airline's fortunes in the leisure market. Employee-count estimates across business databases vary widely, from roughly 85 to a few hundred, so the workforce is best described as a compact organisation of an estimated 100 to 200 staff rather than a precisely audited figure.

Sundair belongs to no global alliance and operates no frequent-flyer network of its own in the legacy sense. Its aircraft are frequently supplemented by Fly Air41, a Croatian-registered carrier that flies in Sundair livery and also provides ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance) capacity to other airlines such as Condor. Understanding this two-AOC group structure is essential context before evaluating any single figure below.

Sundair operates a single-family, single-manufacturer fleet built entirely around the Airbus A320 platform. According to Planespotters fleet data (updated for 2026) and the Sundair entry on Planespotters.net, the airline's active fleet is small, roughly five aircraft, and comparatively old, with an average age near 19 years. This is typical for a leisure carrier that acquires used aircraft and operates them on flexible leases to keep capital costs low. There are no next-generation A320neo aircraft in the fleet, and no publicly confirmed order for them: Sundair continues to rely on classic-engine A320ceo aircraft powered by CFM56-5B engines, as reflected in CFM International's own press material about Sundair's engine order.

Fleet data compiled from Planespotters, Airfleets and Wikipedia, as of 2025 to 2026. Numbers are approximate and shift with seasonal leasing and Fly Air41 allocation.

Because Sundair and Fly Air41 pool aircraft, the exact tail count seen flying under the Sundair name changes through the year. During the peak summer schedule, Fly Air41 machines are added to lift tour-operator demand, and at least one Fly Air41 aircraft has worn a dedicated Sundair-style livery (registration 9A-BER) to reinforce the shared brand. In practical terms, a Sundair pilot works within a group that controls a modest but flexible pool of single-aisle Airbus jets rather than a large standardised mainline fleet.

Sundair does not publish official pilot pay scales, and it is not covered by a public collective bargaining agreement. As a result, the salary picture has to be reconstructed from crowd-sourced pilot data, principally the Sundair entry on PilotJobsNetwork, cross-referenced with the company's known block-hour pay model. The figures below should be read as indicative ranges rather than contractual guarantees. They are gross figures under German employment, before income tax and social contributions, which together can absorb a large share of a pilot's headline pay.

The pay structure has two parts: a monthly base salary tied to rank and grade, and additional block-hour pay that kicks in above a monthly threshold. According to the crowd-sourced data, the rank ladder runs from Cadet through First Officer grades (F/O G1, F/O G2), Senior First Officer grades (SFO G2, SFO G3), and then Captain grades (CPT G1, CPT G2), Junior Captain and Senior Captain grades (SCP G1 to G3). A portion of monthly pay is also structured as a tax-free allowance, a common German practice for duty-related expenses within legal limits.

First Officer Pay Scale (indicative)

Indicative gross ranges from crowd-sourced pilot data, including base plus typical block-hour pay. Actual pay depends on grade, flight hours and contract type.

Captain Pay Scale (indicative)

Top Captain figures reflect the highest basic grade recorded in crowd-sourced data. Real totals vary with block hours, allowances and the German tax-free component.

Block-Hour Pay Above the Threshold

On top of base salary, pilots earn a per-block-hour rate once they fly beyond a monthly threshold reported at 45 block hours. The rate rises in bands as monthly hours climb, which rewards the intense summer flying that defines leisure operations. The table below reflects the crowd-sourced structure.

Block-hour pay bands from crowd-sourced Sundair pilot data. For context, Sundair's cabin-crew adverts describe a base built around 65 block hours plus overtime of about €40 per hour from the 65th hour and €55 from the 80th, illustrating the same productivity-linked philosophy for the company as a whole.

Sundair does not publish its rostering rules, so the honest position is that precise days-off patterns are not publicly documented. What can be stated with confidence is the framework that governs them. All Sundair flying operates under German labour law and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency flight time limitations (EASA FTL), which set maximum duty periods, minimum rest and cumulative flight-hour ceilings. You can review the underlying rules on the EASA website. Company planning appears to target roughly 65 block hours per crew member per month, a figure drawn from Sundair's own crew adverts, which sits squarely in the normal European short-haul range of about 60 to 80 block hours.

The defining quality-of-life feature is seasonality. As a leisure charter carrier, Sundair flies hard in summer and during school holidays, then eases off in the shoulder and winter months (except for year-round sun routes such as the Canary Islands and Egypt). In practice this means high-intensity blocks of early starts, long turnaround days and late returns during peak season, balanced by quieter winter rosters. The block-hour pay bands described above are structured precisely to reward the busy months, so monthly income tends to rise and fall with the flying season.

Illustrative only. This pattern represents a typical EASA short-haul leisure summer month and is not a Sundair-published roster. Real rosters vary with season, base and staffing.

A structural advantage of the leisure charter model is route predictability: many flights follow the same weekly tour-operator pattern, so specific outbound and inbound days repeat through a season. That regularity can make personal planning easier than at an airline with constantly shifting schedules. The counterweight is that a very small fleet leaves little slack, so a single technical issue or a tour-operator change can trigger last-minute roster adjustments and standby call-outs.

Because Sundair is a German employer, the foundation of its benefits package is German statutory social protection rather than a bespoke airline scheme. Pilots on German contracts are enrolled in the national social-security system: statutory or private health insurance, the state pension (Deutsche Rentenversicherung), unemployment insurance and long-term care insurance, with employer and employee sharing contributions. On top of this baseline, the clearest window into Sundair's own benefits comes from the airline's published crew adverts, which list a defined set of perks. Several of these are documented specifically for cabin crew; where a benefit has not been separately confirmed for pilots, this guide flags it rather than assuming parity.

The training benefit is arguably the most valuable single item for the target audience of this guide. A funded A320 type rating for a selected non-type-rated First Officer removes one of the largest financial barriers in a pilot's early career. Combined with pay during training and a company pension contribution, the package is respectable for a carrier of this size, even if it cannot match the negotiated benefit structures of a large unionised airline.

Career progression at Sundair follows a grade ladder that is visible in the crowd-sourced pay structure: Cadet, First Officer (G1 and G2), Senior First Officer (G2 and G3), Captain (G1 and G2), Junior Captain and Senior Captain (G1 to G3). Movement up this ladder is grade and experience based, with pay rising at each step. Unlike a large legacy carrier, Sundair does not publish a formal, union-protected seniority list, so progression is governed by company policy and operational need rather than a transparent bidding system.

The most important structural fact for career planning is fleet size. With only around five aircraft flown under the Sundair name, the number of command seats is inherently limited, which can slow internal upgrades in a steady state. Two factors work in the other direction. First, the group's Croatian sister airline, Fly Air41, adds A319 and A320 capacity and therefore additional command and mobility opportunities inside the same corporate family. Second, and importantly for ambitious First Officers, Sundair does accept direct-entry Captains: type-rated command vacancies are advertised externally, which tells you the airline fills the left seat both from within and from the wider market rather than exclusively through internal upgrade.

Sundair recruits pilots directly through its own careers channel and through pilot job boards, and the current vacancies are unusually clear about what is required. There are two main cockpit streams: A320 First Officer (with non-type-rated candidates explicitly welcome) and A320 Captain (type-rated). Applications are made through the airline's careers page, where candidates upload their licence, medical, language evidence and supporting documents. All flying is under a German AOC overseen by the German civil aviation authority, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA), so EASA licensing standards apply throughout.

First Officer — Requirements

Captain — Requirements

Application Stages

Sundair is a short and medium-haul carrier, so this guide deliberately does not include a long-haul layover section. For a pilot, the more relevant question is where the airline flies from, because basing determines where you must live under the 50 km rule, and what the day-to-day flying actually looks like. Sundair operates a classic German outbound-leisure network: sun-and-sea destinations reached on day-return or short-turnaround patterns from a handful of German airports.

The current base structure, per the airline's public profile, centres on three airports:

The airline's footprint has shifted over the years. Earlier operations included Berlin Tegel (which closed in 2020, with traffic migrating to BER) and Kassel, and Sundair announced the withdrawal of its Kassel-based aircraft in 2024. Leipzig/Halle has appeared as an occasional seasonal charter point rather than a core crew base. This flexibility is normal for a tour-operator-driven carrier, but it also means base stability is not guaranteed over a multi-year horizon, a point worth weighing given that Sundair expects pilots to live locally.

On the destination side, the network concentrates on three leisure regions. In the Mediterranean, Sundair serves Greek islands and mainland points such as Heraklion (Crete), Kos, Rhodes and Thessaloniki, together with Beirut in the eastern Mediterranean. In the Canary Islands, Gran Canaria (Las Palmas) and Tenerife South are staples that keep flying alive through the winter. On the Red Sea, Hurghada in Egypt is a core sun destination. Turkish and Balearic resorts such as Antalya and Palma de Mallorca round out the typical seasonal mix. Sundair also appears as a named partner airline on Condor's website, reflecting the commercial ties in the German leisure market.

To put Sundair in context, it helps to compare it with two other players in the German leisure market: Condor, the large, established, unionised leisure carrier, and Marabu Airlines, a newer leisure start-up flying modern A320neo-family jets. The chart below uses the same six-metric logic as the scorecard (shown here on five axes). Scores are editorial estimates based on the research behind this article, not audited figures.

Key Takeaways from the Comparison

Condor sets the pay and security benchmark. Condor pilots are covered by a collective agreement with Vereinigung Cockpit that delivered a 7% rise from January 2024 and committed further 5% increases in 2025 and 2026, per the union and industry reporting. Reported Condor First Officer pay runs from roughly €6,789 per month at entry into the €9,000-plus range with seniority, and Captains from about €12,388 up to €18,708 per month. Sundair's crowd-sourced ranges sit well below this, and without a CBA there is no guaranteed annual uplift. On salary and job security, Condor leads clearly.

Marabu wins on fleet, Sundair loses on it. Marabu, launched in 2023 and based in Tallinn but flying the German leisure market, operates an all-A320neo-family fleet (growing toward around ten aircraft), whereas Sundair flies older A320ceo airframes averaging close to 19 years. On equipment, both Condor (modern mixed fleet including A330neo) and Marabu are ahead of Sundair.

On work-life and benefits, the gap narrows. Sundair's documented 35 vacation days, company pension and German statutory protections are respectable, and the leisure short-haul pattern can be predictable within a season. Condor still edges ahead with a fixed roster, around 11 days off per month and 42 days of annual leave. Marabu advertises comparable leisure-sector conditions (35 vacation days, base salary from day one) but, like Sundair, without a large unionised framework.

Accessibility is Sundair's real edge. The comparison metrics do not capture the one area where Sundair genuinely stands out for the target reader: it hires non-type-rated First Officers and funds the A320 rating. For a lower-hour EASA pilot, that open door can matter more than a few points of salary or fleet age.

The dominant pilot union in Germany is Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), the German Air Line Pilots' Association, founded in 1969 and representing roughly 9,000 flight-crew members across German commercial aviation. VC negotiates pay and conditions at the major carriers, campaigns on flight safety, and represents German pilots at European and international level. You can read more about its role and current bargaining on the Vereinigung Cockpit website. Its influence is visible in landmark agreements, including the 2023 to 2026 pay deal at Condor and negotiations over pension structures at Lufthansa.

Sundair's position in this landscape is straightforward but important: there is no publicly documented collective bargaining agreement between Sundair and Vereinigung Cockpit, and Sundair is not named among VC's primary bargaining airlines in public sources. In practice this means pilot pay and conditions at Sundair are set through company policy and individual contracts rather than a negotiated, union-protected framework. This is common for small leisure carriers, but it is a meaningful difference from Condor or the Lufthansa Group airlines, where collective agreements provide structured pay scales, guaranteed increases and formal seniority protections.

What the German Framework Still Guarantees

There is no notable recent history of pilot strikes at Sundair, which reflects both its small size and the absence of the large-scale collective negotiations that periodically trigger industrial action at bigger carriers. The German leisure sector as a whole has seen VC-led disputes at Condor and TUIfly over pay and rostering, and VC has publicly voiced concern that newer, less-unionised operators could be used to pressure sector labour standards. For a Sundair pilot, the practical takeaway is that collective leverage is limited, but statutory and safety protections remain firmly in place.

Before applying or making any career decision, verify the details directly with primary sources, because leisure-carrier hiring, pay and basing change quickly with the seasons. These are the key websites and organisations relevant to a Sundair pilot career: