TunisAir Express (French: Société des Lignes Intérieures et Internationales (Arabic: طيران السابع), operating under the name "TunisAir Express," is an airline based in Tunis, Tunisia that was founded on August 1, 1991. Formerly known as Tuninter and SevenAir, its parent company is the national carrier Tunisair.
Initially limited to domestic routes (it is still the only airline to fly internally within Tunisia), Tuninter, as it was then known, obtained permission to begin international operations in 2000. It operates to destinations in Tunisia, Italy, and Malta.
TunisAir Express transported a total of six million passengers between 1992 and 2008, carrying 300,000 passengers in 2008 alone.
[edit] History
From its founding in 1990 until 2000, TunisAir was known in French as Tuninter, and bore the Arabic name "Domestic Airline" (الخطوط الداخلية). In honor of the date on which it opened its first international routes (7/7/2000), the airline was re-named "SevenAir" (Compagnie Aérienne Sevenair Tunisie, طيران السابع). SevenAir was owned by a relative of the wife of the former President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, and was renamed TunisAir Express following Ben Ali's departure from Tunisia on January 14, 2011.[1]
[edit] Destinations
As of March 2011, TunisAir Express operates scheduled passenger flights to the following destinations:[2]
Malta
Tuninter
ATR-72 with former livery (English side)
Tuninter
ATR-72 with former livery (Arabic side)
[edit] Accident
- 6 August 2005, Tuninter Flight 1153: a Tuninter ATR-72 crash-landed in the sea 18 miles off the Sicilian coast while on a flight from the Italian town of Bari to Djerba in Tunisia. The aircraft was carrying 39 passengers and crew, 16 of whom died. Officials at Bari airport reported that most of the passengers were Italian tourists. The fuel indicator was reading incorrectly because it was designed to be fitted only in a smaller plane: the ATR42. Therefore, the crew did not detect that the aircraft was running low on fuel. The turboprop suffered fuel exhaustion and the ATR72 ditched off the Sicilian coast. The airline was banned from flying into Italy for under two years.[3]
As of February 2011, the TunisAir Express fleet consists of the following aircraft:[4]
[edit] External links
[edit] References
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