Busy Bee - History

History

The concept of Busy Bee was to make a small airline that could provide air taxi operations for business executives. The board, consisting of shipping owners, claimed they alone would need one aircraft between them. The airline started operations in May 1966, but already in June they had to acquire another The New Piper Aircraft Aztec C. In 1967 the airline acquired a sea plane and Norway's first executive jet, a Lear Jet 23.

In the early 1970s the airline started operating a few of Braathens SAFEs Fokker F-27 aircraft. In the 1970s the airline also operated a number of Short Skyvans. From 1973 the airline changed its name to Air Executive Norway and changed its liveries from honey-yellow and brown to red, white and blue. In 1979 the airline received a Boeing 737-2R4C. The airline went heavily into the charter business, and especially the Norwegian Defence Force chartered a lot of aircraft. In addition the airline continued flying executives with smaller aircraft.

The airline changed its name back to Busy Bee of Norway on May 28, 1980. The airline also started wet lease operating routes for Braathens SAFE on the West Coast. Braathens SAFE wanted to reduce its fleet to only one kind - the Boeing 737-200 - and some of the F-27 aircraft were moved to Busy Bee who continued to operate routes that were too small for jet aircraft.

In 1992 the airline went bankrupt. Part of the reason was that the airline was not able to compensate for the revenue loss after the Norwegian Military stopped chartering flights and instead used scheduled routes to transport its personnel. The airline operated 14 Fokker F-27 and F-50 aircraft when it went bankrupt.

The operations serviced by Busy Bee for Braathens on the West Coast were taken over by the new airline Norwegian Air Shuttle in 1993, who bought three of the Fokker 50 aircraft. In 2003 after Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) had bought Braathens, SAS Commuter took over the routes, branding them Westlink. SAS has said the routes will be transferred to SAS' subsidiary Widerøe.