Charter flights from 1983, scheduled service from 1995.

Sun Country Airlines is a leisure airline based at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, with its headquarters on airport property. English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated on 2 July 1982 and received its certificate from the Civil Aeronautics Board on 17 January 1983. Revenue flights began on 20 January 1983, between Sioux Falls and Las Vegas, using a Boeing 727 leased from Air Florida.

The early airline was a small charter operation. English Wikipedia names Captain Jim Olsen as founder, president, chief executive and chief pilot, with his wife Joan Smith-Olsen in charge of inflight operations, and says several early employees had previously worked for Braniff International Airways, which had stopped flying in 1982. By 1988 the headquarters were at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul airport, and scheduled passenger service began in 1995 with flights from Minneapolis to several larger cities.

Ownership changed several times. English Wikipedia records that the airline suspended operations in 2001 and filed for Chapter 11 protection again in October 2008, and between those dates and afterwards it passed through a series of owners: Petters Group Worldwide and Whitebox Advisors from 2006, the Davis family, owners of the Cambria brand, from July 2011, and funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management from December 2017. Amazon took a minority stake in 2019, and Sun Country began flying cargo for Amazon Air in May 2020.

In July 2017 the airline appointed Jude Bricker, a former Allegiant Air executive, as chief executive, and under him Sun Country began moving toward an ultra-low-cost model, according to English Wikipedia. Apollo sold its remaining shares in February 2025.

A further change came in 2026. Allegiant Travel Company, the parent of Allegiant Air, announced an agreement to buy Sun Country on 11 January 2026. AirlineGeeks, in a report by Zach Vasile published on 13 May 2026, said Allegiant had closed the acquisition that day after approvals from regulators and shareholders. Allegiant Travel Company has owned Sun Country since May 2026.

A sun, a sundial, a compass and a lake.

Sun Country’s colours have been warm from the start. AirlineGeeks, in a “Livery of the Week” feature by Ryan Ewing published on 23 February 2024, says the inaugural 1983 flight wore an orange, red and white scheme with an abstract sun and chunky lettering. In 1996 the airline revised the scheme, keeping much of the colour but letting fuselage stripes cross the text, and placed a new logo representing a sundial on the tail.

A bigger shift came in 2001, when, according to the same feature, Sun Country introduced a livery with watermark-like text along the fuselage in dark blue tones, while keeping an orange stripe. The airline was then taking on a new Boeing 737 fleet.

The current scheme came out of a staff vote. AirlineGeeks reported on 12 June 2018, in a piece by Akhil Dewan, that Sun Country employees had voted among four similar designs and that the winner, known as “#TeamA,” had won by what the airline called a landslide. Quoting the airline’s Facebook page, the report says the compass logo on the tail mirrored the tail of the previous livery, that the depth chart of Lake Minnetonka was introduced as a new “lakes” design element to show the airline’s commitment to its home state, and that a refreshed, bold use of orange was meant to signal the airline’s plans for serving leisure travellers.

The 2018 report also quoted Brian Davis, then the airline’s senior vice president for commercial, who said the vote would give employees a say in the airline’s transformation. New aircraft were to arrive in the new livery, with the existing fleet repainted on the regular schedule. The 2024 AirlineGeeks feature describes the result as a vibrant blue base with orange stripes and a stylised sun logo, with tail contours inspired by Lake Minnetonka, and notes its nickname, the “Tide Pod” livery.

US airlines and their surfaces.

An airline’s identity is read from a long way off before it is read up close. The tail fin is a surface seen from a distance: it stands above the terminal roofline, it appears in every ramp photograph and planespotting shot, and it is usually the one place where a carrier puts its mark at full size. Designers treat the fin as a billboard that must stay legible at a distance, in poor light and at an angle, which is why marks there tend to be bold, simple and high-contrast.

The fuselage carries the second layer. A livery can be a white body with a coloured cheatline, a fully painted body in a single signature colour, or a gradient that runs from nose to tail. Each choice has practical trade-offs in paint weight, maintenance and how the aircraft reads against sky and tarmac. The name on the fuselage is usually set in a wordmark that has to work from a few metres and a few hundred.

On the ground, airport signage, gate areas, check-in counters, uniforms and terminals extend the same system. Wayfinding colour, counter panels and boarding-pass layouts are all brand surfaces, and a terminal building itself can become part of how an airline is remembered.

A home state painted on the tail.

The Sun Country identity is built from two ideas that have run through each version of the livery. One is the sun, present in the name, in the abstract sun of 1983 and in the sundial mark of 1996, and carried on in the orange that has stayed on the aircraft through every change described by AirlineGeeks. The other is Minnesota, which the 2018 scheme made explicit by drawing the depth contours of Lake Minnetonka onto the tail.

The 2018 design looks back toward the airline’s base, with the lake lines tying the aircraft to the Minneapolis area. The airline’s own words, quoted by AirlineGeeks in 2018, framed the lakes element as a sign of commitment to its home state and local customers.

The employee vote is part of the story too. Rather than presenting a finished design, Sun Country put four close variations to staff and adopted the one they chose. AirlineGeeks noted at the time that other carriers had also involved employees in livery decisions, including American Airlines in 2013 and Allegiant Air for its Airbus aircraft.

What happens to the identity next depends on the merger. English Wikipedia says the combined company plans to bring operations under the Allegiant Air brand while keeping a significant presence at Minneapolis–Saint Paul. AirlineGeeks reported in May 2026 that, for the near term, the two airlines would continue to operate as separate entities with their existing schedules and reservation systems until the FAA issues a single operating certificate, and that Allegiant expects Minneapolis–Saint Paul to remain an important operating centre.

For a design guide, Sun Country Airlines shows how an airline can place its home landscape on the tail while keeping the warm colour its name promises. Compare Alaska Airlines, another US carrier whose tail speaks for its home region, and Frontier Airlines, a US low-cost carrier with its own painted tails. For this guide we use orange, blue and white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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