Braathens SAFE

If you leaf through old slides of Norwegian airports, you almost inevitably come across them: Boeing 737s with a red cheatline, the Norwegian flag on the tail and a king’s name on the fuselage. For decades, Braathens SAFE was Norway’s second major airline and the direct rival of SAS. It has not existed since 2004 – but its history explains a lot about how Norwegian air traffic works to this day. This page shows you where the airline came from, what it flew and how to assign Braathens photos cleanly.

Braathens SAFE at a glance

Braathens SAFE was a Norwegian airline that flew under its own name from 1947 to 2004. It was founded on March 26, 1946, by Ludvig G. Braathen, a shipowner from Oslo. The abbreviation in the name reveals the original idea: SAFE stands for “South American & Far East Airtransport.” Braathen wanted to get crews and spare parts quickly to ships overseas – his own and those of other shipping companies, mainly in the Far East.

After a few years, this shipping-company airline became something quite different: a domestic airline that connected Norway’s cities along the coast and also flew vacationers to the south. For decades, Braathens shared the Norwegian market with SAS, at first strictly separated by routes, from the late 1980s in direct competition. In 2001 SAS bought the competitor, and in 2004 the two Norwegian operations merged into SAS Braathens.

A comparison helps with context: what Norwegian is to SAS today, Braathens was until the early 2000s – the big Norwegian counterpart with a fleet of Boeing 737s.

The history in stages

The history of Braathens is closely tied to Norwegian aviation policy. Which routes an airline was allowed to fly was long decided by the state through concessions – and these very concessions repeatedly determined where Braathens developed.

For spotter historians, one detail from the early years is particularly appealing: in April 1959 a Braathens DC-4 landed on a cleared snow runway in Adventdalen on Spitsbergen. That test flight led to charter flights to Longyearbyen – long before Svalbard got a permanent airport.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code BU: appeared in the flight number, so on tickets, departure boards and in timetables.
• ICAO code BRA: was used in the air traffic control flight plan.
• Callsign BRAATHENS: this is how the crew identified itself on the radio.

After the merger, the code BU continued at SAS Braathens, but flights were sold and displayed to passengers under SAS flight numbers with SK. If you look for Braathens in old timetables or logbooks, it is therefore worth checking the date: before 2004, BU clearly stands for Braathens, afterward for the SAS operation in Norway.

From the Far East route to a domestic airline

The start was ambitious. Braathen bought used Douglas C-54s – the military version of the Douglas DC-4 – and sent them on charter flights around half the world. In 1947 alone, 25 flights went to Hong Kong, plus flights to New York and Johannesburg. The Far East route became so important that Braathens received a state concession for it.

With the founding of SAS, everything changed. The new Scandinavian joint airline received the international scheduled service rights from Norway, and Braathens lost its Far East service in 1954 – and with it the majority of its revenue. As compensation, the airline was allowed to fly selected domestic routes. The first one led in 1952 with a small de Havilland Heron from Oslo via Tønsberg to Stavanger. In the first year, Braathens carried a good 2,800 passengers on it.

From this grew a network along the west coast and into the north: Trondheim, Ålesund, Kristiansand, later Bodø and Tromsø. The remaining domestic routes stayed reserved for SAS. This division lasted over three decades and shaped the scene at Norway’s airports – sometimes the aircraft there were SAS’s, sometimes Braathens’, but rarely on the same route.

A second mainstay was vacation flights. From 1959, Braathens flew vacationers to the Mediterranean for the tour operator Saga Tours, at first with DC-4s, from 1961 with the Douglas DC-6. The technical base was at Stavanger Sola, the main base at Oslo Fornebu.

The Braathens SAFE fleet

In almost 60 years, Braathens flew a remarkably colorful succession of aircraft types. The overview shows the most important ones, with the periods according to the fleet history:

Type	Period	Spotter note
Douglas C-54 / DC-4	1947–1966	First workhorse, names with “Norse …”
Douglas DC-3 / C-47	1947–1964	Small addition to the early fleet
de Havilland Heron	1952–1960	Four-engine light aircraft for the first domestic routes
Fokker F27 Friendship	1958–1977	Turboprop in the domestic network, last examples went to Busy Bee
Douglas DC-6B	1962–1973	Vacation flights to the Mediterranean
Fokker F28 Fellowship	1969–1986	The airline’s first jet, together with the 737-200
Boeing 737-200	1969–1994	20 examples, the backbone for 25 years
Boeing 767-200	1984–1986	Only two aircraft, quickly sold again
Boeing 737-400	1989–2004	Longer Classic version
Boeing 737-500	1990–2004	Largest group of the late fleet
Boeing 737-700	1998–2004	Next Generation, the last new arrivals
Fokker 100 and BAe 146-200	1997–2001	Came into the group through the Swedish subsidiaries

Braathens ordered the Fokker F-28 and the Boeing 737-200 in 1965 – on the F-28 the airline was even the launch customer –, and the first jets were delivered in 1969. The Boeing 737 then remained the core of the fleet until the end. Alongside it, the Dutch manufacturer Fokker played an important role: from the turboprop F-27 through the jet F-28 to the Fokker 100, aircraft from Amsterdam flew for the airline.

A short chapter was the Boeing 767. Braathens ordered two 767-200s in 1980, mainly for the charter business. The aircraft arrived in 1984 with 242 seats, but the concept did not work economically. As early as 1986, both were sold again.

In the end the fleet was very uniform: in 2004 it consisted of 26 Boeing 737s of the -400, -500 and -700 series. With the merger, these aircraft passed into SAS operations.

How to recognize Braathens

The classic Braathens livery is simple and precisely for that reason easy to recognize: white fuselage, a wide red cheatline with narrower white and blue stripes and the Norwegian flag on the vertical stabilizer. This basic pattern held for decades with small changes – from the early aircraft to the 737-400 and -500.

A break came on March 23, 1998. From then on the airline called itself just “Braathens,” got a blue-painted lower fuselage and replaced the flag on the tail with a silver-gray wing logo. By 1999 the flag returned to the tail. Photos from this short phase therefore don’t look like Braathens at first glance. How such design changes work is shown in the article When airlines change their design.

One detail that sets Braathens apart from many airlines is the aircraft names. The early Douglas aircraft were called “Norse …,” and the Herons carried Norwegian men’s names. From the last F-27s on, the aircraft were named after Norwegian kings – a tradition that lasted until the Boeing 737.

For the 737 family, the generation also helps you with dating: a 737-200 with slim, long engines dates from the time until 1994, a 737-400 or -500 with thicker engines from the 1990s, and the 737-700 only from 1998. How to tell the generations apart reliably is explained in the guide How to tell Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

Hubs and routes

For almost 50 years, Oslo Fornebu was the home of Braathens. The company headquarters was there as well, an office building called “Diamanten.” With the opening of the new capital airport, Braathens moved to Gardermoen in 1998 – today Oslo Airport. Maintenance stayed at Stavanger Sola.

The network concentrated on Norway for a long time: Oslo with Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, Ålesund, Kristiansand and the cities in the north. From 1989 international routes were added, first Billund, then among others Newcastle. With the Swedish subsidiary, Stockholm Arlanda also became a base between 1997 and 1999.

Smaller routes were partly taken over by the sister airline Busy Bee, to which the last F-27s went in the mid-1970s and which went bankrupt in 1993. In the north and on many short routes, Widerøe was also active – with its own turboprops and a completely different network.

Competition, expansion and takeover by SAS

From 1987, Braathens and SAS were allowed to compete on the same domestic routes. On April 1, 1994, the Norwegian domestic market was fully deregulated; shortly before, in January 1994, Braathens had gone public on the Oslo stock exchange. The shipping holding company Braganza of the Braathen family remained a major shareholder.

At the end of the 1990s, Braathens grew significantly. In 1996 the airline bought the Swedish Transwede, in 1998 Malmö Aviation. At the same time, KLM came in with 30 percent, and Braathens took over most of KLM’s routes between Norway and Amsterdam. The frequent flyer program was first called Bracard, from 1999 Wings – members also earned miles with KLM, Northwest Airlines, Continental and Alitalia.

Then came the move to Gardermoen – and with it a hard price war. SAS, Braathens and the newcomer Color Air built up capacity at the same time, but the number of passengers grew by far not to the same extent. In 1999 Braathens lost more than a billion kroner. The airline discontinued the Swedish activities from the Transwede legacy in November 1999.

In 2001 SAS took over the shares of Braganza and KLM. From April 2, 2002, the two airlines split the domestic network between them instead of continuing to fly in parallel on the same routes.

For spotters this means: between 2004 and 2007 there is a transition period in which the Braathens name was still in the company, but the aircraft increasingly wore SAS colors. How to recognize such mixed phases in photos is explained in the article on hybrid and mixed liveries.

Braathens in the spotter’s everyday life today

You no longer encounter Braathens SAFE in scheduled service. The last Boeing 737s passed to SAS and gradually lost their Braathens colors there. The subject lives on mainly in archives: on slides from Fornebu, in registration collections and in old timetables. Norway’s aviation history as a whole is shown by the Norsk Luftfartsmuseum in Bodø.

If you collect historic fleets, Braathens is a rewarding project. The fleet was manageable, the registrations are Norwegian and the royal names make many aircraft identifiable even in blurry photos. You will find ideas for building such a collection under Collecting registrations and Collecting airlines.

A look at the neighbors is interesting, too: in Denmark a similar story played out, in which private airlines like Maersk Air and Sterling existed alongside SAS. If you are interested in famous color schemes of the past, you will find more examples in the legendary airline liveries.

Common mix-ups

• Reading SAFE as a safety promise – the abbreviation stands for South American & Far East Airtransport.
• Treating Braathens SAFE as the same as Braathens Regional Airlines – the Swedish companies belong to the family holding Braganza but are independent airlines.
• Assigning every photo with a BU flight number to Braathens – after 2004 the code continued at SAS Braathens.
• Taking photos from 1998/99 for another airline – in this period the flag on the tail was missing, replaced by the wing logo and the blue belly.
• Taking the Fokker 100 and BAe 146 for the Braathens core fleet – they came through the Swedish subsidiaries and flew in the group for only a few years.
• Confusing the 737-500 and 737-300 – Braathens used almost only the shorter -500 and the longer -400, and a single 737-300 flew in the fleet only briefly.

Conclusion

Braathens SAFE began as a shipping-company airline with flights to Hong Kong and became Norway’s second major domestic airline. For decades the red cheatline, the flag on the tail and the Boeing 737 shaped the scene at Norwegian airports. With the takeover by SAS and the merger in 2004, this story ended – for spotters there remains a manageable, well-documented fleet that is ideal for an archive and a collection.