History
The airline was established in 1987 and started operations in 1988 as Air Botnia, flying Embraer EMB-110 Bandeirantes on night cargo flights and on passenger services from Helsinki to Kauhajoki and Seinäjoki. It started to supplement its unpressurised Bandeirantes with leased British Aerospace Jetstream 31s in 1993, but cash flow problems in the summer of 1995 caused British Aerospace to repossess the Jetstreams and brought Air Botnia to the point of bankruptcy, with last minute negotiations needed to save the airline, which continued operations in a reduced scale.
The airline was purchased by SAS Group in January 1998, with the new owners re-equipping the airline, replacing its Jetstreams with Saab 340s later that year, and receiving its first jets, Fokker F28 Fellowships in 1999. The elderly F28s were soon replaced as their high noise levels restricted operations, with Avro RJ85s being received in 2001, with its Saab 340s being replaced by larger Saab 2000s at the same time.
Air Botnia was renamed Blue1 in January 2004, and joined Star Alliance as the first regional member on 3 November 2004. Blue1 became a full member of Star Alliance on 1 January 2010.
In 2005 Blue1 became the second largest Finnish airline with more than 100 daily flights and biggest operator between Finland and Scandinavia.
In 2006 Blue1 started 10 new nonstop routes to Europe increasing its total capacity by more than 50%.
In 2008 Blue1 moved its London operations from Stansted to Heathrow Airport, and undertook strong expansion on domestic business routes. In 2009 new routes to Lapland, including Paris-Kittilä were opened for the winter season and routes to Biarritz, Dubrovnik and Split for summer travel.
Blue1 was the first network airline in Northern Europe to be granted ISO 14001 environmental certificate.
On 26 March 2012, Blue1 changed hub from Helsinki-Vantaa to Copenhagen Airport. Although Helsinki-Vantaa is still the largest airport to operate from.
On 1 November 2012, Blue1 was turned to a service producer for SAS. This means that marketing and sales are now handled by SAS (including use of SAS internet domain name), and flights carry the SAS flight prefix "SK".
Read more about this topic: Blue1
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)