Widerøe

Widerøe is the airline that holds Norway together on a small scale. While the big jets shuttle between Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, Widerøe flies propeller aircraft to places whose runways are often only about 800 meters long: the Lofoten Islands, the fjord coast, Finnmark. For spotters this is a world of its own – hardly any jets, plenty of turboprop sound, a fleet with history, and a real piece of aviation history in the form of the very first E190-E2 in scheduled service. This page shows you how to recognize Widerøe, which types to expect and where you have a chance to see them.

Widerøe at a glance

Widerøe is Norway’s largest regional airline and is based in Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle. It was founded in 1934 as Widerøe’s Flyveselskap, among others by the pilot Viggo Widerøe. In its very first summer the young company flew a route from Oslo via Kristiansand and Stavanger to Haugesund. The early years were above all colorful, though: taxi, ambulance, training and photo flights, often with seaplanes. In 1936/37 Viggo Widerøe himself photographed parts of the Antarctic coast from the air on an expedition.

His daughter Turi Widerøe is well known too: in the 1960s she flew seaplanes and later the Twin Otter for the family business in northern Norway, before moving to SAS, where in 1969 she became the first female pilot at a major Western airline.

Ownership changed several times over the decades. For a long time Widerøe belonged to SAS, which sold its shares to a group of investors in 2013 and 2016. In July 2023 Norwegian then announced the takeover, and the purchase was completed in January 2024. Since then Widerøe has been part of the Norwegian group, but it continues to fly under its own brand and with its own codes.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code WF: appears in the flight number, so on departure boards, tickets and in schedules.
• ICAO code WIF: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on most flight trackers.
• Callsign WIDEROE: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

The Ø stands out. It is a fixed part of the brand name, but in the callsign and often in databases it becomes a plain O or “OE”. So when you search for the airline in an app or list, feel free to try both spellings. How IATA and ICAO codes work in general is explained in the article IATA and ICAO codes explained.

The network: short runways, the coast and government routes

To understand Widerøe you need a look at the map. Norway is long, rugged and in many places hard to reach by road or ferry. That is why between 1965 and 1987 the country built around 30 small airfields with short runways of mostly about 800 meters – above all in northern and western Norway. Widerøe entered this short-runway service in 1968, first in the Helgeland region, and today flies most of these routes.

The domestic network covers a good 40 airports. A large share of the routes is flown on behalf of the Norwegian state: the state tenders routes to remote places that would not pay for themselves, and the airline receives a subsidy for them. Another part is commercial traffic, for example longer domestic connections such as Bergen–Tromsø, where the largest aircraft in the fleet operate.

Important airports for Widerøe are Bodø, Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø and Sandefjord-Torp. Abroad it mostly goes to Sweden, Denmark and the UK, with more destinations depending on the season. The airline thus sees itself as the link between the small places on the coast and the big hubs such as Oslo Airport.

Feature	What it means for spotters
Runways of around 800 m	Only short, nimble turboprops fit here – the Dash 8-100 is the workhorse
Many small airports	Little traffic, but almost every movement is Widerøe
Longer domestic routes	This is where Dash 8-400s and E190-E2s fly
Rough weather, long darkness	Photography in winter takes planning but rewards you with snow and northern lights atmosphere

The fleet: almost all Dash 8

Since the 1990s the De Havilland Canada Dash 8 has been the backbone of the fleet. Between 2000 and 2018 Widerøe even flew only this type. According to fleet overviews from 2025, the fleet looks like this:

Type	Number (as of 2025)	Seats	Use	Spotter note
Dash 8-100	about 22–23	39	Short-runway airfields	Shortest fuselage, the workhorse of the north
Dash 8-200	4	39	Short-runway airfields	Same fuselage as the -100, more powerful engines
Dash 8-300	3	50	Regional routes	Slightly longer fuselage
Dash 8-400	about 17–18	78	Longer domestic and international routes	Clearly stretched, six-blade propellers
Embraer E190-E2	3	just over 110	From Bergen, including Bergen–Tromsø	The fleet’s only jet

The exact numbers vary slightly depending on the source, because individual aircraft are parked, in maintenance or swapped. In total the fleet stands at about 50 aircraft with an average age of over 20 years. At the Farnborough air show in July 2024, Widerøe ordered two more Dash 8-400s. In the long term the airline wants to replace a large part of the older Dash 8s; what the successor on the short runways will look like is still open – so treat the table as a snapshot.

You may know the Dash 8-400 from other regional airlines in Europe. At Widerøe it is the big sister of the fleet and flies the longer routes. In the short-runway network, on the other hand, the small Dash 8-100 rules – an aircraft that is hardly seen in scheduled service in central Europe anymore.

Dash 8-100, -300 or -400? How to tell them apart

From a distance all Dash 8s look the same: high wing, two turboprops, tall T-tail. The versions differ mainly in fuselage length – and you see that best by counting the windows or looking at the ratio of fuselage to wing.

For photos with visibly turning propellers, by the way, you need a longer shutter speed than for jets. How to set that without blurring the picture is shown in the guide Photographing propellers.

The E190-E2: a piece of aviation history

In January 2017 Widerøe ordered three Embraer E190-E2s and secured options on further aircraft. That made the Norwegian regional airline the launch customer of the second E-Jet generation. Widerøe took delivery of the first aircraft in early April 2018 in São José dos Campos, Brazil, and on April 24, 2018 the type’s first scheduled flight in the world followed on the Bergen–Tromsø route.

The three jets are based in Bergen and fly longer routes from there, for example to Tromsø. Compared with the first generation, the Embraer E190, you recognize the E2 by the clearly larger Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines and the longer, slimmer wing. For collectors a Widerøe E2 is a special catch: with only three examples it is rare, and it stands for the start of an entire aircraft program.

How to recognize Widerøe

Green is a tradition at Widerøe: the company’s very first aircraft, a Waco seaplane, was delivered in green in 1934, and the color became the house color. The fuselage carries the “Widerøe” titles with the distinctive Ø. Paint schemes change over the years, and individual aircraft wear special liveries – so don’t rely on colors alone, but always on registration and type as well.

The surest feature is the registration: Norwegian aircraft carry the prefix LN-. A Dash 8 with an LN- registration at a Scandinavian airport is very likely a Widerøe. What the country prefixes mean is explained in the article Country codes on aircraft, and how registrations are structured is shown in Understanding aircraft registrations.

Spotting Widerøe: where and when

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland Widerøe is a rarity. The network is concentrated in Norway; abroad it mostly goes to Sweden, Denmark and the UK. If you want to see Widerøe on purpose, it is best to plan a spotting trip to the north.

In Oslo, Widerøe lands alongside Norwegian and SAS – a good place to get the Dash 8-400 and, with luck, the E2 in front of your lens. If you are traveling in Denmark, you can see Nordic regional aircraft at Copenhagen Airport from the Flyvergrillen spot; whether a Widerøe is among them is revealed by a look at the current schedule.

Spotting in the far north also means planning weather and light. In winter it is dark for a long time, in summer almost never. You can find tips for cold days in Plane spotting in winter. Similar regional airlines with turboprops and small airports are, by the way, Loganair in Scotland and Luxair with its Dash 8-400 – if you like those, you will love Widerøe.

Partners and context

Widerøe does not belong to any alliance. The airline works with individual partners through codeshares, including Air France, KLM, Finnair and Lufthansa. For travelers that means a flight to Norway with a big airline can continue on a Widerøe Dash 8. Frequent flyers collect points with Norwegian Reward.

Compared with a regional subsidiary such as KLM Cityhopper, Widerøe is more independent: its own brand, its own network, its own codes. It shares its owner with Norwegian, but not the fleet – Norwegian relies on Boeing 737s, Widerøe on propellers and a handful of Embraers.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Widerøe with Norwegian – same group and same LN- prefix, but its own brand, its own codes and a completely different fleet.
• Treating “Dash 8” as a finished note – the version (-100, -200, -300, -400) makes the difference.
• Trying to tell the -100 and -200 apart by looks – the two are almost identical visually; only the type code or a fleet list helps.
• Mistaking the E190-E2 for a first-generation E190 – look for the large geared turbofan engines.
• Thinking Widerøe is an SAS subsidiary – the link to SAS ended gradually by 2023; today Widerøe belongs to Norwegian.
• Overlooking the Ø – in databases it is often “Wideroe”, on the radio “WIDEROE”.

Conclusion

Widerøe is the airline for everyone who loves propellers. Behind the name with the Ø lie more than 90 years of history, a network of small short-runway airfields on the Norwegian coast and a fleet in which the Dash 8 flies in four versions. Add to that the E190-E2, a jet that made aviation history. Anyone who logs version and registration cleanly turns every Widerøe sighting into a special entry in the logbook.