Malmö Aviation

If you search for photos from the 1990s and 2000s in Sweden showing a four-engine regional jet in front of a small city airport, the chance is high that you will run into Malmö Aviation. The airline turned Stockholm Bromma Airport back into a scheduled-service airport, relied on the BAe 146 and Avro RJ for decades and was closely tied to Norway’s Braathen family. Here you learn how a small flight school became a domestic airline for business travelers, how to recognize its aircraft in old pictures and why the name disappeared from the schedule in 2016.

Malmö Aviation at a glance

Malmö Aviation was a Swedish airline based in Malmö, founded in 1981. In its first years it was not yet a scheduled airline but was active mainly in on-demand and cargo traffic. In the late 1980s it flew cargo for the express service TNT, among other things, with BAe 146-200s in the freighter version and with turboprops such as the Fokker F27 Friendship.

At the start of the 1990s the profile changed. In 1991 scheduled flights to Hamburg and London entered the schedule. After the liberalization of Swedish domestic air traffic in 1992, the airline took the step that made it known: scheduled flights from the close-to-town airport Stockholm Bromma, including to Gothenburg, Malmö and London City. This put it in direct competition with SAS and the then domestic airline Linjeflyg, which by then had consolidated their Stockholm domestic traffic at Arlanda.

Malmö Aviation targeted mainly business travelers, for whom the short trip from downtown Stockholm to Bromma was a strong argument. On board there were newspapers, meals and hot towels. The airline was repeatedly named Sweden’s best domestic airline at the Grand Travel Awards in Stockholm.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code TF: appeared before the flight numbers, on boarding passes and in schedules.
• ICAO code SCW: air traffic control used it to identify flights.
• Callsign SCANWING: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio – a name that at first glance has nothing to do with “Malmö.”

The IATA code TF lives on at the successor BRA Braathens Regional Airlines. When you analyze old schedules, a TF flight number before 2016 therefore belongs to Malmö Aviation, and afterward to BRA. How IATA and ICAO codes work together is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes. Why callsigns often sound completely different from the airline name is covered in Airline callsigns and their history.

The history in stages

The Braathens years

The connection to the Braathen family is the common thread of the second half of the story. In 1998 the Norwegian Braathens SAFE took full control of Malmö Aviation. In early 1999 the Swedish Braathens subsidiary, which had emerged from the former Transwede, was integrated into Malmö Aviation. Transwede had previously flown its own domestic routes from Arlanda but had already given up the route to Malmö in 1995.

When SAS bought the Norwegian Braathens in 2001, Malmö Aviation stayed outside for legal reasons. The airline became independent again and now belonged to the Braathen family through the holding company Braganza. In 2007 Braganza consolidated its Swedish aviation holdings in the holding company Braathens Aviation; later the regional airline Sverigeflyg was added. Besides Bromma, Gothenburg and Malmö, Umeå developed into one of the most important destinations; at the end of 2015 the airline even planned a base of its own there, initially with a Saab 2000.

Bromma: the airport that shaped everything

Without Bromma, Malmö Aviation can’t be understood. The airport, opened in 1936 in western Stockholm, was once the city’s gateway to the world. With the opening of Stockholm Arlanda, international traffic moved there from 1962, and in 1984 the domestic flights of SAS and Linjeflyg followed. Only the liberalization in 1992 brought scheduled service back to Bromma – and Malmö Aviation was the airline that shaped it.

Bromma has peculiarities that influence the choice of fleet: a single runway of just under 1,670 meters, night flight bans and strict noise limits that are even tighter for scheduled flights than for other flights. A compact, comparatively quiet regional jet with good short-field performance fit the picture – and that was exactly the BAe 146 family.

Besides Gothenburg Landvetter, the most important destinations included Malmö and Umeå. Abroad, it went to London City, Brussels and Nice, among others. Charter flights were added in summer as well as winter, in the cold season for example to the Alps in Salzburg. How scheduled and charter traffic differ is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

The fleet: BAe 146, Avro RJ and a few exceptions

For long stretches Malmö Aviation was an operator of the BAe 146 family. An exact year-by-year record cannot be cleanly reconstructed from the available sources, but the most important types are well documented:

Type	Period	Use	Spotter note
Fokker F27	late 1980s	Cargo, early years	High-wing turboprop
BAe 146-200 / 146-200QT	from the late 1980s	Cargo for TNT, later scheduled	“QT” stands for Quiet Trader, the freighter version
Avro RJ85	2000s–2016	Domestic and charter	95 seats, shorter than the RJ100
Avro RJ100	2000s–2016	Backbone of scheduled service	112 seats, longer than the RJ85
Saab 2000	around 2013–2016	Supplement	Turboprop, partly shared with sister companies

In spring 2013 the fleet consisted of around a dozen Avro RJs, overwhelmingly RJ100s, supplemented by a Saab 2000. At times an RJ100 of the Faroese Atlantic Airways also flew for Malmö Aviation.

BAe 146: the entry

The BAe 146-200 accompanied Malmö Aviation from the cargo era into scheduled service. The freighter version 146-200QT flew for TNT – the same combination of cargo service and quiet four-engine jet you also know from ASL Airlines Belgium, the former TNT Airways. For Bromma the type was ideal: short runways, steep approaches and a low noise level for its time. The sister models 146-100 and 146-300 differ mainly in fuselage length.

Avro RJ85 and RJ100: the backbone

In the 2000s the modernized Avro RJ versions took over. The Avro RJ100 matches the 146-300 in length and was the workhorse with 112 seats. The shorter Avro RJ85 with 95 seats flew domestically and on charter routes. Compared with the BAe 146, the RJ got new engines and a modernized cockpit, among other things – externally the differences are small. The shortest version of the family is the Avro RJ70.

All versions were built by British Aerospace, today part of BAE Systems. Why four-engine short-haul jets have almost completely disappeared today is explained in the article The end of the four-engine jets.

The CSeries that never came

For the successor to the Avro fleet, Malmö Aviation had planned a big step: the airline was to become launch customer of the Bombardier CS100. In September 2014 it gave up that role; the first operator in 2016 was Swiss. The order for five CS100s and five CS300s never led to deliveries to Malmö Aviation. The CSeries flies today as the Airbus A220-100 and A220-300; you can find more about the original manufacturer under Bombardier.

How to recognize Malmö Aviation

In old photos Malmö Aviation is usually easy to identify if you pay attention to three things:

• The type: a four-engine high-wing jet with a T-tail is almost always a BAe 146 or Avro RJ. Malmö Aviation hardly had any other jets in scheduled service.
• The registration: Swedish registrations begin with SE-.
• The location: Bromma, Gothenburg Landvetter, Malmö, Umeå, London City or Brussels are typical backdrops.

In addition there was at least one special livery: around 2009 an Avro RJ100 carried the logo of the Swedish football association and brought the national team to its matches. How to find and classify such special liveries is shown in the article Finding special liveries.

After mergers there were often transition phases in which aircraft still carried elements of the old brand. The articles on hybrid and mixed liveries and When airlines change their design explain more.

The end: Malmö Aviation becomes BRA

In February 2016 Malmö Aviation and Sverigeflyg merged their flight operations. The goal: one joint brand for the Swedish domestic market instead of two names. The choice fell on BRA Braathens Regional Airlines – “bra” means “good” in Swedish. After that Malmö Aviation no longer flew a network of its own but operated as Braathens Regional Aviation and provided aircraft along with crews for BRA, in principle as a wet-lease provider within the group.

The Avro era ended in the following years; BRA increasingly relied on ATR 72-600 turboprops, at times also on the Saab 2000. During the coronavirus crisis in 2020 BRA had to suspend flight operations for several weeks and went into a reorganization procedure. At the end of 2024 BRA left Bromma and has flown from Arlanda since, on a wet lease for SAS.

Malmö Aviation and its contemporaries

• SAS: The big competitor at Arlanda – and in 2001 the buyer of Braathens, which made Malmö Aviation independent again.
• Linjeflyg: Sweden’s classic domestic airline, which merged into SAS in 1993 – exactly when Malmö Aviation was growing big at Bromma.
• NextJet: Another Swedish regional airline that until 2018 mainly served smaller towns.
• West Atlantic: Also Swedish, but in the cargo business – a field from which Malmö Aviation also originated.
• TUI fly Nordic and Novair: Swedish leisure airlines; TUI fly Nordic goes back to Transwede’s charter branch.

An overview of regional airlines across Europe – from the past to today – is offered by the article Regional airlines in Europe. And if you want to evaluate old pictures, Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky helps.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Malmö Aviation with Malmö Airport – despite the name, Bromma was the hub; Malmö was only the headquarters and one of several destinations.
• Thinking the BAe 146 and Avro RJ are different aircraft families – the RJ is a further development of the 146 with new engines and cockpit.
• Assigning the code TF only to BRA – before 2016 it stood for Malmö Aviation.
• Mixing up Braathens SAFE and BRA – the Norwegian Braathens SAFE merged into SAS, BRA is the Braathen family’s Swedish airline.

Conclusion

Malmö Aviation was not a big airline, but one with a clear profile: business travelers, short distances and an airport close to the city. From a small cargo and flight school operation, after 1992 it became the airline that turned Stockholm Bromma back into a scheduled-service airport. For spotters it stands for a time when the BAe 146 and Avro RJ were part of everyday life in Sweden. Today it lives on in the code TF and in BRA – and in old photos where you should take a close look at the titles and the SE- registration.