Airlines of the world: Norwegian Air Shuttle

Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA (OSE: NAS), often referred to only as Norwegian, is a Norwegian airline that operates scheduled commercial flights on the basis of nine bases in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain. Norwegian has its administrative base in Oslo, technical base in Stavanger and have their operational bases in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Malaga, Las Palmas, Alicante, London, Hamburg, Cologne / Bonn and Munich
Norwegian currently holds the position as Scandinavia's second largest airline. The company is Scandinavia's fastest growing and has a total of 2500 employees. Norwegian has about 50 percent market share of  destinations the company covers in Norway. Norwegian transported in 2012 17.7 million passengers. The annual growth in the number of passengers has been approximately 2.5 million in recent years.

In the wake of Busy Bees bankruptcy in 1993, Norwegian Air Shuttle was established. Like the Busy Bee, the company in the beginning  operated the former Braathens SAFEs coastal routes, which was the company's short-haul routes on the west coast of Norway. The company began with a fleet of three Fokker 50 machines.

Norwegian Air Shuttle ran these routes until August 2002, when the company changed its operating strategy. The company was repositioned and was a pure low-cost airline. The company opened on 1 September 2002 its first low-cost routes. These went from Oslo to Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and Tromsø. Fleet consisted of seven Boeing 737-300 machines, configured with 148 seats per machine. The following year Norwegian opened its first international routes. These went from Oslo to Faro, Malaga and Murcia. On 18 December 2003 Norwegian was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and issued new shares, raising 250 million dollars. The following year, the company received its first profit result since the Boeing 737 operations in 2002.

The company has increased the number of aircraft sharply in recent years. In 2004, a total of 11 aircraft in the fleet. In 2012, this figure increased to 68 In 2007 the the company purchased the Norwegian flynordic from the Finnish Finnair and established a base at Arlanda airport outside Stockholm. FlyNordic changed names in 2008 to Norwegian.se.

The Company announced on 29 October 2008 that it would take over parts of the routes the bankrupt airline Sterling had operated. It was announced by the Norwegian that 10 of its aircraft will be based at Copenhagen Airport and a total of 11 new routes from Copenhagen were announced.

The 25th January 2012 Norwegian released a statement in which they announced an order for 222 aircraft valued at 127 billion from the manufacturers Boeing and Airbus, with options for 150 additional aircraft. The agreement involves the purchase of 22 Boeing 737-800 and 100 Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 100 aircraft of the Airbus A320neo. The options are divided into 100  Boeing 737 MAX and 50 Airbus A320neo.

Norwegian 787 Dreamliner