Blue1

Copenhagen

Blue1 (until 2004 Air Botnia ) is a Finnish regional airline based in Vantaa and based on the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and a subsidiary of the SAS Group. It conducts its flights by route network of SAS Scandinavian Airlines and maintains a hub at Copenhagen airport.

History

Air Botnia

The formerly operating under the name Air Botnia regional airline was founded in 1987 by father and son Pakari which also Finncomm Airlines called into existence later. She flew on behalf of Finnair regional routes with low demand, especially in the northern Lapland and on the Gulf of Bothnia. For this purpose, two Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante, and a Swearingen Merlin and a Cessna 402 were used. 1995, they first flew from the capital of Lapland, Rovaniemi, two weekly flights to Murmansk in northern Russia. To this end, one of four newly acquired BAe Jetstream 31 was used. This one, however, had taken over and continued in the early summer of 1995 the flight operation. The company was reorganized and bought in January 1998 by SAS Scandinavian Airlines.

Blue1

Since early 2004, the company operates under the name Blue1. She undertakes since shuttle flights to the hubs of the SAS in Stockholm and Copenhagen, as well as point-to -point connections from Helsinki and other Finnish cities to Western and Eastern Europe. The liquor was then replaced by the Saab 340 and Fokker 28-4000 of SAS. With new noise regulations, the Fokker had from 2001 through Avro RJ85 and RJ100 be replaced.

On 31 October 2004, Blue1 regional member of the airline alliance Star Alliance, but resigned in December 2012 again.

In the medium was planned, widespread conversion of the fleet to Boeing 717-200. For summer 2011, the first to fly a total of nine 717 at Blue1, these were taken over by Spanair and Air Quantum. In addition, a new design of the coating called Flowing introduces this aircraft, which was varied individually for each machine. It was developed by the Helsinki Aalto University.

In June 2011 it was announced that Blue1 decommission the deficit remaining Avro RJ85 earlier than planned, as well as some employees will be laid off. In addition, the route network was essentially focused on Scandinavian goals, some goals such as London, Paris, Berlin and Munich were set in the sequence.

In November 2012, Blue1 was more strongly bound to the parent SAS Scandinavian Airlines, so took these marketing the Blue1 flights under the name SAS Suomi. The independent website Blue1 has been set, but the brand name is retained. The base of Blue1 is since 26 March 2012, the Copenhagen airport, most movements are still being carried out by Helsinki - Vantaa.

Destinations

Blue1 currently served next to some destinations within Finland Helsinki from Oslo in Norway, Stockholm in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark. In addition, from there and from Copenhagen - sometimes only seasonally - even served a few other European destinations, including Athens, Prague and is currently the only German -language destination Zurich.

Fleet

As of August 2013 the fleet of nine aircraft Blue1 from there with an average age of 12.7 years:

• 9 Boeing 717-200 ( operated for SAS Scandinavian Airlines)

Blue1 is currently besides Express only European operator of the Boeing 717