Norwegian Air Shuttle | |||||
IATA | ICAO | Callsign | Started Operations | Country | Main Base |
N8 DY | NAX | NORSHUTTLE | January 22, 1993 (F50) September 1, 2002 (B737) |  Norway | Oslo Gardermoen (OSL/ENGM) |
- 1993-2002 : Norwegian Air Shuttle
Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) was established in 1993 as a domestic regional airline by former Busy Bee employees. Busy Bee (founded 1966) had flown regional services for Braathens SAFE but went bankrupt after the end of its contract to fly military charter flights for the Norwegian Army. The initial operations of NAS started with 3 Fokker 50 bought from Busy Bee and operating in cooperation with Braathens SAFE. During the 90s, the airline failed several times to obtain PSO (Public Service Obligation) routes. These routes went to rival and well-established Widerøe. In 2001 Braathens threatened to buy its own aircraft to fly the routes, and Nowegian Air Shuttle finally launched its own flights from January 7, 2002 between Stavanger and Newcastle. The cooperation with Braathens ended in 2002 when Braathens was bought by SAS, the latter prefering to contract its SAS Commuter subsidiary or Wideroe to fly the regional services in Norway.
- From 2002 : Norwegian
In 1998 Norwegian newcomer Color Air had tried to introduce low fares in the market but the price war that followed between Color Air, Braathens & SAS led to the end of its operations just one year later, and to the fusion of SAS & Braathens a few years later. On September 1, 2002, Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) was rebranded as Norwegian and became a low-cost airline operating B737s on domestic trunk routes. The first aircraft painted in the new red-nose livery in August 2002 was Braathens-leased B737-505 LN-BRU ,featuring Real Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, but this aircraft only served for a few months. During fall 2002 Norwegian initially operated a few B737-300s, the first aircraft being LN-KKF (Real Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen), LN-KKJ (Real Norwegian Sonja Henie) and LN-KKL (Real Norwegian Roald Amundsen). Fokker 50 operations continued in 2003 as the airline finally won a PSO contract for routes within Northern Norway. However Fokker 50 operations were ended on December 31, 2003 with the airline concentrating on low-cost B737 operations.
- Complete fleetlist of the tail designs & special liveries :
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