Bluebird Nordic

If you stood at a European cargo airport at night in the 2010s and early 2020s, you may have seen them without consciously noticing: a slender Boeing 737 without windows, an Icelandic registration on the fuselage, the code BBD on the tracker. Bluebird Nordic was the small but astonishingly busy cargo airline from Iceland. It hasn’t flown since April 30, 2024 – making it a piece of aviation history for spotters that you can now only find in archives and old logbooks. This page shows you who Bluebird was, what it flew and how to place its aircraft on old photos with confidence.

Bluebird Nordic at a glance

Bluebird Nordic was an all-cargo airline from Iceland. It was founded around the turn of the millennium under the name Bluebird Cargo; the Icelandic company name was Bláfugl ehf., which means nothing other than “blue bird.” In March 2001, operations began with a single Boeing 737-300F that carried cargo daily between Iceland, the UK and Germany.

The idea behind it was simple and obvious for an island in the North Atlantic: Iceland depends on fast connections for cargo – fresh fish out, spare parts, mail and online orders in. While Icelandair carried cargo mainly in the belly of its passenger aircraft, Bluebird relied on its own freighters in the handy size of the 737.

Over the years it grew into more than a pure Iceland airline. Bluebird increasingly flew for other cargo customers in Europe, including large express carriers. The aircraft were therefore often far from Iceland – at the night hubs of the express industry.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code BO: appeared in flight numbers, for example in cargo booking systems and on schedules.
• ICAO code BBD: showed up in air traffic control flight plans and on flight trackers.
• Callsign BLUE CARGO: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio – even after the renaming to Bluebird Nordic, the old name stayed in the callsign.

The callsign in particular is a nice detail for anyone who likes listening to radio traffic. If you go through old recordings or notes, you’ll still find “BLUE CARGO” until spring 2024.

History: from Bluebird Cargo to Bluebird Nordic

The airline’s history can be roughly divided into four stages.

The switch to the Avia Solutions Group was a turning point. The group, originally from Lithuania, is big mainly in the ACMI business: it provides other airlines with aircraft complete with crew, maintenance and insurance. Airlines such as Avion Express also belong to it. Bluebird thus became the cargo building block in a large leasing network. How such models work is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

Under the new owner, the signs initially pointed to growth. In August 2021, Bluebird announced it wanted to expand its fleet of Boeing 737-800 freighters to 25 aircraft by 2024. From early 2022, used Boeing 777s, former passenger aircraft, also came into the company – a clear step beyond the previous 737 world. In April 2022, Audrone Keinyte took over as managing director.

The big growth failed to materialize, though. After the boom of the pandemic years, when air cargo was scarce and expensive, demand dropped sharply. Bluebird ceased operations on April 30, 2024, returned its air operator certificate and handed the aircraft back to the lessors. That puts Bluebird on the list of European airlines that disappeared after a market shift – more on this in the overview Major airline collapses in Europe. Unlike some passenger airlines, though, this was not a spectacular overnight collapse but an announced shutdown.

The fleet: Boeing 737 as a freighter

Bluebird’s trademark was the Boeing 737 in freighter version. None of these 737s was built by Boeing as a freighter – they are all former passenger aircraft that were converted to freighters after many years in scheduled service. For this, the cabin is stripped out, the windows are closed off, the floor is reinforced and a large cargo door is installed at the front left.

Type	Role at Bluebird	Spotter note
Boeing 737-300F	Founding type, in service from 2001	Shorter than the 737-400, engines with a flattened underside
Boeing 737-400F	Long the workhorse, in service until the end	Classic 737 with CFM56 engines, somewhat longer than the -300
Boeing 737-800BCF	Younger generation, in the fleet from around 2021	737 Next Generation with a larger wing and winglets
Boeing 777	Former passenger jets, with the company from 2022	Twinjet widebody, not to be confused with a 737

The exact number of aircraft fluctuated widely because almost all aircraft were leased and came and went depending on the order situation. One thing is reliable: at the end, the fleet was small. Sources cite a handful of aircraft for spring 2024, including 737-400Fs and one Boeing 777. We deliberately leave out more precise numbers here because the figures differ.

To help you place the types, there’s the overview of 737 freighters: you’ll find the older conversions on the page Boeing 737-300SF/-400SF, the base version on Boeing 737-300. The modern generation is described on Boeing 737-800BCF and 737-800SF. For comparison with a factory-built widebody freighter, the page on the Boeing 777F helps. The manufacturer of all types is Boeing.

737 Classic or 737-800BCF? How to tell them apart

On old Bluebird photos, the question often comes up: is this a Classic-generation 737-400F or already a 737-800BCF? Neither has windows or passenger doors in the usual form, and both carry the large cargo door at the front. A few details help.

If you want to reliably tell the 737 generations apart in general, you’ll find all the features in detail in the guide Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart. And for the topic of freighters in general, the article Recognizing cargo aircraft helps.

How to recognize Bluebird

A uniform, eye-catching livery like at big passenger airlines was not Bluebird’s most reliable feature. Many aircraft flew on behalf of other companies, and leased aircraft change their look quickly anyway. For a reliable attribution, the registration therefore counts most.

Icelandic aircraft carry the prefix TF-. Bluebird typically used the series TF-BB… – a pattern you quickly notice when sorting old photos. How registrations are built in general and what the country prefixes mean is covered in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.

Where Bluebird operated

Keflavík was the home base. From here ran the scheduled cargo flights that connected Iceland with the continent. In early 2021, for example, Billund in Denmark and Dublin were on the scheduled program, supplemented by charter and ad hoc flights. You’ll find more about the home airport on the page for Keflavík Airport.

For spotters in Central Europe, though, two other places were more decisive: the cargo hubs Liège in Belgium and East Midlands in England. At both airports, express cargo gathers at night, and Bluebird aircraft were at times a familiar sight there. Customers named include DHL, FedEx and UPS – how these express carriers organize their networks and why they use third-party airlines is explained in the post Express integrators DHL, FedEx and UPS.

• Liège Airport (LGG) – one of Europe’s most important cargo airports; the matching photo location is described in Spotting at Liège cargo airport.
• East Midlands Airport (EMA) – Britain’s big express cargo hub; with the East Midlands Aeropark there’s a well-known spotting place there.
• Billund Airport (BLL) and Dublin Airport – destinations of the scheduled cargo from Iceland.

Exciting for collectors: the aircraft themselves haven’t necessarily disappeared after the end. Leased freighters usually go to new operators and get new registrations in the process. If you photograph a former Bluebird 737 today under a different name, it’s worth a look at the serial number’s history. How to research something like that is explained in the articles Finding and tracking an aircraft by registration and How old is this aircraft?.

Bluebird in the context of Icelandic aviation

For such a small country, Iceland is astonishingly rich in airline history. Besides the network airline Icelandair and the ACMI specialist Air Atlanta Icelandic, there were several low-cost attempts, such as WOW air (2011–2019) and Iceland Express (2002–2012), plus the low-cost airline PLAY, launched in 2021. Historically formative was also Loftleiðir, which offered cheap transatlantic flights via Iceland as early as the 1950s and 1960s.

In this lineup, Bluebird was the specialist for cargo on short and medium-haul routes. Since the end in 2024, it’s all the more worthwhile to document old Bluebird photos well.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking Bluebird Cargo and Bluebird Nordic are two airlines – it’s the same company, just with a new name from the end of 2017.
• Attributing every TF registration to Bluebird – Icelandair and Air Atlanta Icelandic also fly with TF registrations.
• Attributing by livery – many Bluebird flights ran on behalf of other cargo customers, often without the typical Bluebird look.
• Thinking a 737-400F is a 737-800BCF – fuselage length, winglets and engine shape reveal the generation.
• Thinking Bluebird is still active – operations ended on April 30, 2024.
• Equating the Avia Solutions Group’s fleet with Bluebird – the group has several independent airlines with their own codes.

Conclusion

Bluebird Nordic was never an airline that shone through eye-catching colors or big aircraft. Its strength lay elsewhere: for more than two decades it connected Iceland with the continent and flew at night for Europe’s express hubs – almost always with converted Boeing 737s. Since April 2024, that is history. Anyone with photos showing TF-BB… registrations and the code BBD in their archive owns a small piece of Icelandic cargo history.