Norwegian Air Shuttle

1993–2001: Beginnings as a regional airline

Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) was founded on 22 January 1993 to take over the regional airline services produced by Busy Bee for Braathens in Western Norway. Busy Bee, founded in 1966, was a subsidiary of Braathens that operated a fleet of Fokker 50 aircraft on charter services. This included the network of regional services between cities on the west coast of Norway operated on wet lease for the mother company. Following Busy Bee's bankruptcy in December 1992, NAS took over three leased Fokker 50 aircraft, and started operating from Bergen Airport, Flesland to Haugesund Airport, Karmøy, as well as from Bergen to Molde Airport, Årø or Kristiansund Airport, Kvernberget, and onwards to Trondheim Airport, Værnes. The company was established and owned by former Busy Bee employees and initially had a workforce of fifty. It was based in Bergen, but later established a technical base in Stavanger.

From 1 April 1994, the airline also began service from Bergen to Ålesund Airport, Vigra. In 1995, the company received its fourth Fokker 50s, and had a revenue of NOK 86.6 million and a profit of NOK 2.9 million. It flew 50 daily services.

By 1999, the company had six Fokker 50s and flew 500,000 passengers on 20,000 flights. The company had a revenue of NOK 172 million and a profit of NOK 13 million. On 2 June 2000, NAS bought the helicopter operator Lufttransport from Helikopter Service. In 2000, the NAS fleet was expanded to seven Fokker 50s. From 2 January 2001, several Braathens routes were terminated, including the NAS-operated services from Kristiansund to Trondheim and Molde. The route from Bergen to Haugesund, and Bergen–Molde–Trondheim were reduced.

2002–2009: Emergence as a low-cost carrier

On 7 January 2002, NAS took over the route from Stavanger to Newcastle, flying two round trips per day; this was the first route on which the airline did not wet lease the aircraft to Braathens, but operated the route in its own right. After Braathens was bought by Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in November 2001, all contracts that Norwegian had with Braathens for the routes on the Norwegian west coast were cancelled by SAS, as it wanted its subsidiary SAS Commuter to take the routes over. NAS had an 18-month cancellation period in its contract with Braathens; however, this was not respected by SAS - the contracts were terminated without notice. Following the purchase of Braathens by SAS, and the subsequent termination of its contracts, NAS announced in April 2002 that it would start domestic scheduled services as a low-cost carrier on the busiest routes. From 1 September 2002, the airline re-branded as Norwegian.

The airline opened its second hub at Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport in Poland, flying to Central European destinations. There were two Boeing 737 operating from Warsaw. (The base was closed in 2010.) Norwegian announced on 24 April 2007 that it had bought 100% of the Swedish low-cost airline FlyNordic from Finnair plc, becoming the largest low-cost airline in Scandinavia. As payment for the shares in FlyNordic, Finnair received a 5% share stake in Norwegian.

Norwegian's early success was based on very low cost tickets compared to tickets from other airlines in the same region e.g. SAS. The fleet consisted of rather old Boeing 737-300s, an aircraft type introduced already in 1984, which meant that Norwegian's planes were 10-20 years old. On 30 August 2007, Norwegian ordered 42 new Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with options for 42 more, an order worth US$3.1 billion. This order was later increased by six aircraft in November 2009. In July 2010 15 of the options were converted to orders, and in June 2011 15 more options were converted, bringing the total order of new, owned 737-800s to 78 aircraft with 12 remaining options. Additionally, Norwegian introduced leased Boeing 737-800 aircraft into the fleet. The first leased 737-800 arrived at Oslo Airport, Gardermoen, Norway, on 26 January 2008.

In April 2010, Norwegian started flights from Oslo-Gardermoen and Stockholm to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. During early 2011, Norwegian had three aircraft stationed in Helsinki, and introduced domestic flights to Oulu Airport and Rovaniemi Airport on 31 March 2011. In May, flights to nine additional international destinations began.

2010–2017: Rapid expansion, and long-haul operations

In October 2009, Norwegian had announced that it intended to start flights from Oslo to New York City and Bangkok, for which new intercontinental aircraft were required. In 2010, it said it was considering up to 15 intercontinental destinations from Scandinavia, and would also consider services to South America and Africa. On 8 November 2010, Norwegian announced that it had contracted to lease two new Boeing 787 Dreamliners with delivery in 2012; and that it was negotiating the leasing of additional aircraft.

On 25 January 2012, Norwegian announced the largest orders of aircraft in European history. The orders consisted of 22 Boeing 737-800 and 100 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft with options for another 100 of the latter; and for 100 Airbus A320neos with options for another 50.