Avion Express

You’re standing at the fence, an A320 with the titles of a well-known leisure or network airline taxis to the runway – and yet the tracker shows a code that doesn’t fit: NVD. Then you very likely have Avion Express in front of your lens. The Lithuanian company doesn’t sell tickets to passengers, but leases aircraft with crew to other airlines. For spotters that makes it one of Europe’s most exciting and at the same time most confusing airlines. This page shows you how to identify Avion Express reliably.

Avion Express at a glance

Avion Express is an ACMI airline based in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. It describes itself as an “airline for airlines”: its customers are airlines, tour operators and other clients who need additional capacity at short notice. For this, Avion Express provides the complete package – aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. The customer takes over sales, airport fees and fuel. How this model works in detail is explained in the article Wet lease explained.

Avion Express belongs to the Avia Solutions Group, an aviation group with Lithuanian roots that calls itself the world’s largest ACMI provider. The group also includes maintenance and training operations. Avion Express has no alliances, hubs or network of its own – the aircraft are stationed wherever the customers need them.

From Saab turboprops to the A320: the history

The beginnings were much smaller. In 2005 the airline was founded as Nordic Solutions Air Services and at first flew with four Saab 340s, partly as freighters, partly for passengers. In 2008 it was renamed Avion Express.

The big step came in 2011 with the first Airbus A320 – according to Wikipedia the first Airbus aircraft ever registered in Lithuania. In December of the same year, two more A320s joined. In 2013 Avion Express passed IATA’s IOSA safety audit, and in March 2013 the last Saab 340 left the fleet. Since then the airline has flown exclusively Airbus.

In summer 2014 the fleet comprised nine A320s and two A319s. In the same year Avion Express founded the low-cost airline Dominican Wings in Santo Domingo, but sold its stake again in 2017. Also in 2017, the A321, the longest version of the family, joined the fleet.

Year	Event
2005	Founded as Nordic Solutions Air Services with Saab 340s
2008	Renamed Avion Express
2011	First Airbus A320, first Airbus aircraft in the Lithuanian register
2013	IOSA certification, retirement of the last Saab 340
2017	Introduction of the A321
2019	Avion Express Malta begins operations in May
2025	Avion Express Brasil receives the Brazilian AOC in February
2026	Return of 15 aircraft announced (March), new CEO Vytenis Suklys (May)

Codes and callsign

• IATA code X9: only appears when Avion Express flies under its own flight number, for example on charter flights.
• ICAO code NVD: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and therefore often on the tracker too – even when a customer sells the flights under its own flight number.
• Callsign NORDVIND: this is how the crew checks in on the radio.

Code and callsign still recall the old name Nordic Solutions. If you’re interested in why flight number, callsign and tracker display so often differ, read the article Callsign and flight number. The article on airline callsigns collects curious callsign stories.

One company, three flight operations

Avion Express doesn’t only fly with a Lithuanian license. To stay flexible and reach markets outside the EU, the company runs further flight operations with their own air operator certificates (AOC). For you, this is mainly visible in the registration.

Flight operation	License	Typical registration	Special feature
Avion Express	Lithuania	LY-	Parent company, ICAO NVD
Avion Express Malta	Malta	9H-	Flight operations since May 2019
Avion Express Brasil	Brazil	Brazilian registration	AOC since February 2025, IOSA certified since August 2026

Why so many aircraft are registered in Malta is explained in the article on offshore registrations in leasing. The principle “one group, several AOCs” is also familiar from other ACMI providers in the Baltics.

The expansion to Brazil follows a simple logic: in Europe summer is peak season, while in South America the peaks come at other times. Avion Express moves aircraft to wherever demand is currently greatest. The first long-term customer of Avion Express Brasil was the Argentine low-cost airline Flybondi. In January 2026 the company reported the second aircraft under Brazilian registration, taken over from the European flight operations.

The fleet: only the Airbus A320 family

When it comes to the fleet, Avion Express is as uniform as hardly any other airline: only models of the A320 family from Airbus fly. There is a solid reason for this. Many European customers fly the A320 themselves, so their procedures, ground equipment and catering standards fit directly.

Type	Role at Avion Express	Spotter note
Airbus A320	Backbone of the fleet since 2011	The most common type, often in customer or neutral livery
Airbus A321	since summer 2017	Longer fuselage with additional doors ahead of and behind the wing
Airbus A319	documented with two examples in 2014	Short fuselage; current numbers not confirmed
Airbus A320neo	numbers not confirmed	Whether and how many neos currently fly varies with the lease contracts

The exact size of the fleet changes constantly. At the end of 2025 Avion Express mentioned about 55 aircraft, and the website speaks of more than 50. In March 2026 the company announced that it would return 15 aircraft to the lessors. It cited airspace closures, detours and higher fuel costs, which force European airlines into more cautious growth plans and thereby depress demand for ACMI capacity in summer. The current fleet number is therefore lower than the older figures; we did not find an official, current number for fall 2026.

How to tell the variants of the A320 family apart is shown in the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart. Whether an aircraft belongs to the neo generation is revealed by the large engines – more on that in A320neo or ceo?.

Who Avion Express flies for

The customer list is long and changes from season to season. In the March 2026 announcement on the fleet adjustment, Avion Express names Eurowings, Transavia and Air Algérie as ACMI customers as well as the Lithuanian tour operator Novaturas as a charter customer. On its website the company also shows logos of airlines such as easyJet, Wizz Air, SunExpress, Norwegian or airBaltic.

In Latin America, Avion Express worked among others with Mexico’s Viva Aerobus – where, according to the company, the customer’s pilots partly flew the leased aircraft –, and there is also an agreement with Volaris. Charter flights are added, in Brazil for example for football teams.

How to recognize Avion Express

The difficult news first: you often can’t recognize Avion Express by its titles. Many aircraft wear the customer’s livery, a largely white neutral livery or a mix of both – for example a white fuselage with the customer’s logo on the tail. The article on hybrid and mixed liveries explains such interim solutions.

The most reliable features are therefore:

• The registration: an LY- on the tail of an A320 in European scheduled service is a strong indication of a Lithuanian ACMI operator. Besides Avion Express, GetJet Airlines or Heston Airlines also come into question – the tracker brings clarity.
• The operator code: NVD on the tracker, “NORDVIND” on the radio.
• The type: at Avion Express always the A320 family.
• The context: an aircraft with customer livery but a foreign registration prefix that only appears in the schedule for a few months.

Spotting Avion Express

Avion Express has no fixed base in Germany. You meet the aircraft wherever a customer currently needs capacity – and that is mainly the case in the summer schedule, when leisure traffic and network airlines cover their peaks. In winter, Avion Express increasingly moves aircraft to regions with a different season. How the schedule periods work is explained in the article on the summer and winter schedule.

Its home is Vilnius Airport, where the company’s headquarters is located. There and in the rest of the Baltics you have good chances of charter flights, for example for the Lithuanian tour operator Novaturas.

Handy: many trackers allow alerts for operator codes. How to set up such notifications is shown in the guide to alerts in flight tracking. And because the same registration can show up in a different livery every year, collecting registrations is especially worthwhile with Avion Express.

Avion Express in the Baltic ACMI landscape

Lithuania and Latvia have developed into a center of the ACMI business in Europe. Besides Avion Express, GetJet Airlines and Heston Airlines are also based in Vilnius, and SmartLynx Airlines in Riga. Iceland’s Air Atlanta Icelandic pursues a similar business model in the widebody segment.

The former state airline flyLAL, on the other hand, has not existed since 2009. Lithuania today has no classic network airline with its own hub – all the more visible are the ACMI providers, whose aircraft with LY registrations travel all over Europe. The article Aircraft leasing explained provides background on leasing models.

Common mix-ups

• Equating the livery with the operator – an A320 in Eurowings look may be operated by Avion Express.
• Taking every LY registration for Avion Express – other Lithuanian ACMI airlines also fly the A320 family.
• Automatically assigning 9H- to Avion Express Malta – Malta is a popular registry location for many operators.
• Taking NORDVIND for a Scandinavian airline – the callsign comes from the old name Nordic Solutions.
• Adopting old fleet numbers – after the return of 15 aircraft in 2026, older figures are outdated.

Conclusion

Avion Express is the airline you often see without realizing it. Behind customer liveries and neutral paint schemes is a Lithuanian ACMI specialist with a pure A320 family fleet, three flight operations and customers from Eurowings to Flybondi. If you note the registration and operator code too, you turn a seemingly ordinary A320 into a special entry in your logbook.