SkyUp Airlines (PQ, Kyiv Boryspil) is pushing into the Romanian market over the 2023 Northern Hemisphere summer with an affiliated tour company chartering B737-800s to operate flights to a series of sun destinations from four Romanian airports, the travel news site BoardingPass reported citing information sent by the tour operator Join Up.

Join Up, which is affiliated to SkyUp Airlines, will use an unspecified number of aircraft on a series of flights from Bucharest Baneasa, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, and Suceava to seven airports across Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Tunis, and Portugal between March 26 and October 2.

The aircraft will be provided via an AOC in a European Union member state that SkyUp Airlines is working on establishing. According to reports last summer, that was expected to be SkyUp MT (U5, Malta International), but this entity remains in the start-up stage. The issue should be resolved ahead of the first Join Up charter in Romania. The European AOC is intended to improve SkyUp's access to airports in the bloc, with EU-based airlines enjoying more generous accepts to EU airports than non-EU-based airlines.

According to ch-aviation fleets data, SkyUp Airlines currently has a fleet of two B737-700s and ten B737-800s (six are inactive). Before Ukrainian airspace closed in 1Q 2022, the airline was able to repatriate all but one aircraft from the country. It flipped its operating model from scheduled passenger flights in and out of Ukraine to charter contracts and the ACMI market. Since then, the airline has managed to secure several short term contracts, which currently include Sun Air (Sudan) (SO, Khartoum) and FlyOne (5F, Chisinau International).