Sun Country races into Indianapolis from Minneapolis/St. Paul in time for the Indy 500

Sun Country Airlines launched its first route to Indianapolis on 28 May, just in time for the Memorial Day weekend and the legendary Indy 500 race. A 2-weekly service (Mondays and Fridays) from Minneapolis/St. Paul was the airline’s inaugural route, operated by the airline’s 737-800s. The route is already served up to 6-daily by Delta. Sun Country becomes the ninth US carrier to serve Indianapolis. Sun Country has already planned a second route to Indianapolis, from Orlando (also operating 2-weekly), which will start in early September. That route is already currently served by American (weekly), Frontier (daily), Spirit (2-daily) and Southwest (25-weekly).

Incidentally, the race itself was won by 46-year-old Brazilian Helio Castroneves, in the fastest-ever running of the race. He became the event’s fourth four-time winner, joining AJ Foyt, Al Unser Sr. and Rick Mears, all of whom were attending this year’s event, which also featured the largest single day sporting crowd (around 140,000 people) of any sporting event since the pandemic began last year.

Since the beginning of the year, Indianapolis has welcomed new services from Allegiant (Boston and Los Angeles), American (Boston and Orlando), Southwest (Myrtle Beach, Panama ECP and Sarasota/Bradenton) and United (Charleston, Hilton Head Island and Portland PWM). Spirit will launch Pensacola service on 11 June, with Southwest adding Miami the following day. In 2019, Indianapolis handled 9.54 million passengers, of which fewer than 200,000 were on international flights. Back in May 2018, Delta had launched international service to France with a daily service to Paris CDG. Appropriately, the outbound service operated with the flight number DL500.