About Widerøe's Flyveselskap

Widerøe's Flyveselskap was started in 1934. The first years they were occupied with taxi flights, ambulance service, flight training and photo survey. Their main office was then situated at Ingierstrand outside Oslo - well situated for a float plane/flying boat company. In the 1950s Northern Norway was getting more important for Widerøe - still using float planes/flying boats. The first land based scheduled service was started in 1968 with their flights between Bodø (BOO) and Trondheim (TRD). From 1970 onward Widerøe was synonym with STOLports and deHavilland Canada aircraft - starting with Twin Otters, continuing with Dash-7s and today's all Dash-8 fleet. The ownership of the company has changed hands over time - from the original five enthusiasts i 1934, included the man that gave the company its name - Viggo Widerøe, and today's 100% of the shares are owned by SAS.

Widerøe serves today 35 destinations within Norway and 7 Northern European destinations (2 summer destinations) and have over 300 departures every day with their Dash-8s.

 
Key Figures 2008
Number of passengers, scheduled 2.03 million
Number of flights, scheduled 321 km / 200 miles
Cabin factor 59.7%
Number of employees 1,329
Operating revenue (incl. WIAS) 3,502 MSEK

Resources
   The Widerøe fleet list - in Adobe Acrobat format

Radio call sign Wideroe
IATA code WF
ICAO code WIF
     


Today Widerøe have the different series of deHavilland Canada Dash-8 in their fleet. The -100 series is mainly used between STOLports and connecting the STOLports (airports with around 800 meter long runways) with larger airports. The -300 and -Q400 series are used on flights between larger domestic airports and to international destinations. In other words you need to visit one of Norwegian airports to get a photo of the smallest Dash-8. The latest Widerøe colour scheme was introduced in June 2002, but still a number of WF aircraft have the old colour schemes or the intermediate scheme applied on a number of -300 in the summer of 2001. Below I will try to show you the different Dash-8 series and the colour schemes.
DHC Dash-8-100

LN-WII Dash-8-103 was delivered to Widerøe on 4 August 1994, and was named after the northern most point of mainland Norway - Nordkapp (North Cape). The photo was taken a late afternoon at Trondheim Airport, Værnes (TRD) the first Saturday in February 2005, and the aircraft was heading for one of the STOLports north of Trondheim. LN-WII has got the latest colour scheme.


LN-WIR has one of the older colour schemes - pre 2001 - but this aircraft has the internet address added to promote the Widerøe website instead of the usual WIDERØE included along the cheat line.

DHC Dash-8-300


LN-WFC was one of the aircraft repainted in the summer of 2001, the cheat line has gone and white background colour is more light grey as you see if you compare with the white colour applied to radar dome. LN-WFC is here taking off from Trondheim Airport, Værnes (TRD) heading for Sandefjord Airport, Torp (TRF) in February 2005.


The aircraft wear the oldest colours that the Dash-8-300 ever had - the three green coloured cheat line. There aren't any left of these. Before getting the full new colours, LN-WFP flew around in these spesial colours in the summer of 2007.




An even rarer bird is the latest Q300 added to the fleet - LN-WFT. It was registered on 10 September 2004 and this photo was taken 16 days later at Oslo Airport. Notice one of the bird wings (the light green) is missing on the tail.


And here is the first DHC Dash 8-300 I saw in the new Widerøe colours

 DHC Dash-8-Q400


The Q400 LN-WDA arriving to Trondheim (TRD) from Copenhagen (CPH). All Q400s today in use by Widerøe have the newest colour scheme, but as they waited on the delivery of the first Q400 from November 2001, an all white LN-WDZ (MSN 4016) on short time lease was used. The LN-WDZ stayed by Widerøe until end of March 2003 - part of the time in storage at Sandefjord Airport (TRF) as parts were used to hold the other three Q400s in the air (Bombardier had problems to supply enough spare parts for the Q400 at that time).


LN-WDA taking off from Værnes (TRD) heading back to Copenhagen this Saturday afternoon in February 2005.


This is a historic picture from Manchester International Airport (MAN) taken on 2 May 2004 showing LN-WDB. At that time Widerøe flew between Bergen (BGO) and Manchester - the BGO-MAN-BGO flights were closed on 23 October 2004.

4 March 2009