Norwegian

Norwegian, formally Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, is a low-cost airline headquartered at Fornebu, outside Oslo. Its flights are operated by two companies with their own air operator's certificates, Norwegian Air Shuttle and its wholly owned Swedish subsidiary Norwegian Air Sweden, which share one brand and sales operation. The parent company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker NAS. Since January 2024 the group has also owned Widerøe, the Norwegian regional airline, which keeps its own brand and is not part of this profile.

A regional start

Norwegian Air Shuttle was founded on 22 January 1993 by former employees of Busy Bee, a Braathens subsidiary that had gone bankrupt the previous month. For its first decade it flew Fokker 50 turboprops on regional routes along Norway's west coast from Bergen, largely under contract to Braathens. When SAS bought Braathens in late 2001 and cancelled those contracts, the company changed course: in April 2002 it announced domestic low-cost jet services on Norway's busiest routes, and from 1 September 2002 it traded as Norwegian. The last Fokker 50s left at the end of 2003, leaving a Boeing 737 fleet.

Expansion, long haul and restructuring

Growth over the following years was rapid. Norwegian bought the Swedish low-cost airline FlyNordic from Finnair in 2007, opened bases outside Scandinavia, and in 2012 placed large orders with both Boeing and Airbus. From 2013 it added long-haul flights, first with leased Airbus A340s and then Boeing 787s, to the United States and Asia, using subsidiaries in Ireland and the UK to secure traffic rights.

The strategy shifted from growth to profitability in 2018. The 737 MAX grounding in March 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 then forced a deep restructuring: the airline went through court-supervised reconstruction in Ireland and Norway, ended all long-haul flying in January 2021, cancelled most outstanding aircraft orders and closed its Irish and UK operating companies. It emerged from bankruptcy protection in May 2021 as a short-haul airline. Geir Karlsen, previously chief financial officer, became chief executive that year.

Network and product

Today the network is focused on domestic flights in Norway, routes within the Nordic countries and Finland, and links from Scandinavia to European business and leisure destinations, including the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. The 737s carry 186 or 189 seats in a single cabin, and fares come in LowFare, LowFare+ and Flex versions, with food, drink, checked bags on the cheapest fare and other services sold separately. Passengers can collect points through Norwegian Reward.

Fleet and recent developments

At 30 June 2026 the Norwegian fleet comprised 95 Boeing 737s, including 36 737 MAX 8s, with a further 50 aircraft in the Widerøe fleet, according to the group's second-quarter report. Norwegian ordered 50 737 MAX 8s in 2022 and confirmed an order for 30 more in September 2025. In the second quarter of 2026 Norwegian carried 6.7 million passengers at a load factor of 82.5%; in September 2026 it carried 2.4 million.

In June 2026 the group agreed to buy Nordic Leisure Travel Group, the owner of tour-operator brands including Ving, Spies and Tjäreborg and of the charter airline Sunclass Airlines. The same month Norway's Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal over the airline's EU Emissions Trading System obligation for 2020, a decision that weighed on its second-quarter result.