Sun Country
Sun Country rolled out its first-ever custom livery in 2024. This B-737NG will fly charters for University of Minnesota sports teams. Photo: Sun Country LinkedIn
At A Glance
Pilots joined ALPA: 1996
Number of pilots: 664
Pilot bases: Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
Hubs/key markets: Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minn.
Operations: Sun Country focuses on serving leisure and visiting friends and relatives (“VFR”) passengers and charter customers and providing cargo services with scheduled service throughout the U.S. and to destinations in Mexico, Central America, Canada, and the Caribbean.
Fleet: 12 B-737NGs
For the pilots of Sun Country Airlines, 2025 will be a year of new things: a new Master Executive Council (MEC), a new focus on flying cargo, and a new round of contract bargaining.
For most of its 42-year history, the carrier was known for flying Minnesotans to warm-weather vacation destinations. But five years ago, the formerly all-passenger airline began flying cargo for Amazon Air. Its current fleet of 12 B-737 freighters will almost double, with an additional eight freighters beginning to arrive this year.
The additional freighters, combined with passenger charter operations, will reduce the airline’s scheduled-service business to only 30 percent of its total flying.
The MEC is currently preparing to open contract negotiations, with bargaining scheduled to begin in June. A key part of that preparation is to inform Sun Country’s newer pilots about the Railway Labor Act and how the negotiations process works. A majority of pilots on the seniority list joined the carrier after the last round of bargaining was completed in 2021, and they haven’t gone through a contract cycle before.
