Novair

If you stood at Stockholm Arlanda on a Saturday morning in the 2000s or 2010s, you had a good chance of seeing Novair: a small Swedish charter airline that flew vacationers of the tour operator Apollo to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. Today Novair is history – flight operations ended on October 9, 2023. For spotters, the airline remains interesting anyway, because its short, eventful fleet list from the TriStar to the A321neo fills many photo archives. This page helps you place Novair pictures correctly.

Novair at a glance

Novair was a Swedish charter airline based in Stockholm. The company was officially called Nova Airlines AB and began flight operations in November 1997. From the start it was closely tied to Apollo, one of Sweden’s major tour operators. Novair flew Apollo’s package travelers to the sun – hardly any individual seats, hardly any distribution of its own, but aircraft that a tour operator filled with its guests week after week. How this model differs from classic scheduled service is explained in the article Charter flight vs. scheduled flight.

The home base was at Stockholm Arlanda Airport. For a long time, Novair aircraft also departed from Gothenburg Landvetter, Oslo, Copenhagen, Billund and Oulu in Finland. The crew base in Gothenburg closed in March 2016, and Oslo followed in 2019. After that, the entire fleet was stationed at Arlanda.

Novair always stayed small. The airline never belonged to an alliance, and there was no connecting hub. At the end, 137 people still worked for the airline.

Codes and callsigns

• IATA code N9: appeared in the flight number, so on departure boards, boarding passes and in Apollo’s travel documents.
• ICAO code NVR: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign NAVIGATOR: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

All three belong to a defunct airline. That matters when you analyze old tracker data or radio recordings: codes are not automatically blocked after an airline ends but may be reassigned later. So always attribute a sighting by date and registration, not just by code.

History: 26 years of vacation flying for Apollo

1997–2000: starting with the TriStar

The first flight operations in November 1997 led from Stockholm to Phuket in Thailand and to the Canary Islands – long-haul and medium-haul from the very beginning. For the distant destinations, Novair used the three-engine Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. For the Mediterranean and Canary Islands routes, Boeing 737-800s were added from 1999. In its first years, the airline also flew with chartered Airbus A320s and briefly with a 737-300.

2000s: A330 and A321

Around the turn of the millennium, Novair replaced the TriStars with the Airbus A330-200. From 2001 the airline belonged to Kuoni Scandinavia, so to the same group as Apollo. From 2004, Novair swapped the 737-800 for the Airbus A321 – this began the Airbus phase that lasted until the end.

One chapter remembered in Sweden: after the Indian Ocean tsunami at the end of 2004, Novair brought relief supplies and doctors to the region and flew vacationers back.

Long-haul remained a difficult business. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Novair grounded an A330 and leased it to a Libyan company; its own A330s stayed in the fleet until 2007. Later, the airline again chartered A330s from other companies for individual seasons, including from Orbest, Air Europa and Aer Lingus.

2010s: concentration on Arlanda and the A321neo

In the 2010s the network shrank to the core business: the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands and, at times, Egypt. In 2016 and 2017, a chartered A320 from the British Titan Airways flew for Novair, along with an A321 from the Latvian SmartLynx. In 2017 the two new Airbus A321neos arrived. Originally, three had been ordered. The older A321s left the fleet in the same period.

After Kuoni sold its travel business, Apollo and Novair belonged to DER Touristik, the travel group of the German REWE Group.

2021–2023: Jet Nordic and the end

In April 2021, Apollo announced the sale of Novair to the Danish Jet Nordic Group, which also owns the charter airline Jettime. Novair kept flying for Apollo. In February 2023, it became clear that Apollo would end the cooperation after the summer season. Without a new tour operator, Novair lacked the foundation, and flight operations ended on October 9, 2023. Novair thus joins a long list of European leisure airlines that lost their most important customer – more on this in the overview Major airline failures in Europe.

The fleet through the years

Novair never had more than a handful of aircraft at the same time but changed types surprisingly often. The following overview summarizes the information from the Wikipedia fleet lists; the periods are rounded.

Type	Period	Use	Spotter note
Lockheed L-1011 TriStar	1997–2000	Distant destinations in Asia and the Caribbean	Three engines, the middle one in the tail – an archive classic today
Boeing 737-800	1999–2005	Mediterranean and Canary Islands	Part of the 737 Next Generation
Airbus A330-200	approx. 2000–2007, later chartered	Long-haul	Own aircraft until 2007, later chartered A330s from Orbest, Air Europa and Aer Lingus
Airbus A321	2004–2017	Mediterranean and Canary Islands	Classic engines, wingtips initially without sharklets
Airbus A320	chartered briefly several times	Stand-in	For example the Titan Airways A320 with British G- registration in 2016–2017
Airbus A321neo	2017–2023	Core fleet to the end	221 seats, delivered new in 2017

With 221 seats, the A321neo was the typical workhorse of a northern European leisure airline: big enough for full package-holiday waves, efficient enough for routes as far as the Canary Islands. The manufacturer of both A321 generations is Airbus.

A321 or A321neo? How to tell Novair photos apart

Between 2004 and 2017, Novair flew the first-generation A321, and afterward the A321neo. Both have the same long fuselage, so it pays to look at details. The guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart provides more background on the whole family. For the early Boeing years, the overview Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart helps.

The date of the photo is a surprisingly strong aid at Novair: because the fleet phases hardly overlap, the year of your photo alone narrows down the type considerably. A Novair picture from 2001 almost certainly shows a 737-800 or an A330, one from 2019 an A321neo.

How to recognize Novair

Novair’s appearance did not stay the same over 26 years: with changing types, owners and chartered stand-ins, the livery changed too. If you lay Novair photos from different years side by side, you therefore don’t always see the same aircraft image.

The surest trail is the registration. Novair’s own aircraft were registered in Sweden and carried the prefix SE-. Chartered aircraft, on the other hand, often had foreign registrations – such as G- from the UK, EC- from Spain or EI- from Ireland. The guide Understanding aircraft registrations explains how registrations are structured. And because chartered aircraft often wear a mix of old and new livery, the article on hybrid and mixed liveries is also worthwhile.

Novair in the Scandinavian charter market

Novair was not the only airline flying for tour operators in Scandinavia. The big competitors were tied to their own operators: TUI fly Nordic for TUI and the Danish Sunclass Airlines, formerly Premiair and Thomas Cook Scandinavia, for Ving and Spies. There were also charter airlines such as Sterling and later Jettime, which flew for several customers. In scheduled service, SAS dominated.

This structure explains why Novair was so closely tied to Apollo: a tour operator airline lives on its operator’s business. As long as both belonged to the same group, this was stable. After the sale to Jet Nordic, the cooperation continued at first. When Apollo ended it, there was no alternative for the small fleet.

On Novair’s trail at Arlanda

You can no longer see Novair, but Arlanda remains one of the most rewarding airports in Scandinavia. Leisure airlines are still active there, especially in the weekend and vacation waves. At the other end of Novair’s routes, the plane spotting guide for the Canary Islands is worthwhile. The spot guide to the official spotting areas at Arlanda shows where to stand.

If you want to trace a former Novair aircraft, the registration is your tool. Many aircraft were leased and moved to other operators after their Novair time, often with a new registration. The article Finding a specific aircraft by registration explains how to track individual aircraft by registration or hex code.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Apollo titles with Novair – Apollo also worked with other airlines; the registration decides.
• Confusing the A321 and A321neo – engines, wingtips and the year of the shot separate the two generations.
• Counting chartered aircraft as the airline’s own fleet – A320s, A321s or A330s with foreign registrations were chartered stand-ins.
• Attributing NVR on today’s trackers to Novair – the airline has not flown since October 2023.
• Confusing Novair with Nordic charter airlines of other operators – TUI fly Nordic and Sunclass flew for TUI and for Ving and Spies, respectively.

Conclusion

For a quarter of a century, Novair was the airline behind Apollo’s trips from Sweden – small, specialized in vacation destinations and with a fleet that reinvented itself every few years. From the TriStar through the 737-800 and the A330 to the A321neo, the type list reflects the development of European charter flying. Since October 2023, Novair has been history. For your archive, that means: note the registration and the year of the shot, and you can place every Novair photo with confidence.