The Allplane Podcast #52 - Widerøe, the Norwegian airline going electric, with Andreas Aks

Widerøe is a Norwegian airline that decided to proactively become a world pioneer in the field of aviation decarbonization.

In line with Norway’s goal to decarbonize aviation as fast as possible, Widerøe started researching options to electrify its fleet. The intricate and beautiful geography of Norway plays in its favour, since many of the routes operated by Widerøe are short hops linking small communities, the perfect stage length and capacity to switch to electric aircraft that could be powered by the country’s many hydropower plants.

So, Widerøe has teamed up with Rolls-Royce and Tecnam with the goal to be a true pioneer in the field of electric flight. But it doesn’t stop there, Widerøe is also evaluating the use of eVTOLs to complement and capillarize its route network and it has also spun-off an entity, Widerøe Zero, to channel and support additional projects in the field of green aviation.

On today’s episode, Widerøe’s head of strategy, Andreas Kollbye Aks, talks about all these exciting projects, their status and future prospects and, more generally, how this Norwegian airline wants to lead the world in the path towards decarbonization!

Tune in to today’s episode for the whole story!

Download this episode from:

Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher

Things we talk about in this episode:

  • What is Widerøe and which role it fulfills in the Norwegian air travel market

  • Why Widerøe has taken the lead when it comes to decarbonization

  • Which initiatives is Widerøe pursuing in the field of green flying

  • Why Widerøe has a good shot at suceeding in electrifying its network

  • The collaboration between Rolls-Royce, Tecnam and Widerøe to develop an electric aircraft

  • How eVTOLs may be used in Norway, what they bring to the table

  • What is Widerøe Zero and what sort of projects is going to pursue

Interview transcript:

Hello,

and welcome to the Allplane podcast 

Always with interesting guests that are busy redefining the future of commercial aviation

As usual, before I introduce today’s guest, let me remind you that you can find all the previous episodes of this podcast as well as many other aviation stories on our website: allplane.tv - allplane.tv

Now, people outside of Norway may not have heard about Wideroe…

Wideroe is Norway’s oldest airline, 90 years and counting, and it connects the country domestically, linking many of the regional airports in a country with plenty of mountains, fjords and islands, which often make land transportation impractical.

But if we talk about Wideroe today here on the podcast is because Wideroe is one of the world pioneers in the decarbonization of commercial aviation

Rather than sit and wait, Wideroe has taken a very proactive role in exploring the possibilities of electric aircraft for regional air traffic, as well as the potential role of eVTOLs to build a multi-layer air mobility system. More recently, during COP26, Wideroe announced it is launching a green aviation accelerator, called Wideroe Zero, that will channel many of those initiatives and evaluate new ideas and concepts in this field.

So, to get a better understanding of what these guys up north are up to, I’ve invited Wideroe's head of strategy, Andreas Aks, to come into the podcast to talk about Wideroe’s sustainable flight projects.

So, without further ado, let’s connect with snowy Oslo to welcome Andreas to the podcast!

Hello, Andreas, how are you?

I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for inviting me!

A pleasure. I guess you are connecting from Norway…

That's correct. Oslo. Norway.

Yeah. Great. I guess you also like a cold snap now. Lots of snow and stuff.

Yeah, we got snow here in Oslo two days ago, a lot of snow. As every year, it comes as a surprise, even in this region! So a bit chaotic, the traffic…

…just in time for a perfect Scandinavian Christmas.

You know, very often we tend to get snow, and then we lose it again before Christmas. So hopefully it's gonna remain and stay till over Christmas.

Yeah, it makes a difference! Well, let me introduce you briefly to the audience, although you're going to tell us a bit more now…So basically, you are leading corporate strategy at Wideroe. Pardon me if I don't pronounce it correctly, how it should be pronounced “Wideroe”?

“Widro” in Norwegian, but Wideroe is perfectly fine.

Okay, well, we'll try, haha…you are leading corporate strategic Wideroe, which is a Norwegian airline that has been possibly one of the most, if not the most, active, regular airline in the field of sustainability. You are very innovative in many ways. And, you know, I think it's going to be great if you can, today, tell us a bit more about all the different projects you're involved in, because there's quite a lot you have done: a very advanced project in electric aviation, to have electric flight in Norway in a few years time. You have also partnered with Rolls Royce and with Tecnam, with Embraer as well…and you recently announced a project by which you will spin off, I don't know if that's the right word, but you basically created a subsidiary Wideroe Zero to channel many of these programs and initiatives you have…

Yeah

But first of all, like all guests, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about your background and and also about Wideroe because…I've flown with you guys, it was at a plane delivery, your first Embraer E2 a few years ago…but possibly many people outside of Norway and outside of Scandinavia might not have heard Wideroe,

Of course, Wideroe is the oldest airline in Norway. We're approaching 90 years now. So we've been around for a long time. And my time there, though, is not that long, I joined five and a half years ago, there was ahead of the E2 introduction that you're mentioning. And after I joined Wideroe I was set to do that project and to convert Wideroe from a turboprop airline mainly focused on regional domestic flights in Norway into jet operations and that allow us to fly a bit further out in Europe. So with the E2 introduction, we also started routes to Germany, Finland, the UK,  more routes to the United Kingdom and other Scandinavian destinations. So we expanded our business at that time. And that's well that was back in 2018 when you were in the first flight, a very exciting time being launched.

…And a great and a great reception gala in Bergen, Yes! We came from Aberdeen in Scotland. That was the last leg of the delivery flight from Brazil, all the way from Brazil to Norway, which it's a very long, long journey. But yeah, it was an amazing, amazing experience. Until recently, you were basically very focused on the Norwegian domestic market with relatively small aircraft, flying short, very short sectors like places in the north of Norway. I mean, it's obvious from the map that air transport is essential for many of these communities. It's pretty much the only way for people to move around in the northern parts of Norway. Right. So you are fulfilling that role.

That's true. I mean, our main full focus has always been and it's still like that: connecting the rural parts of Norway with the bigger places and the reason why we have a role to play is because Norway's a mountainous country, also with a lot of fjords…railways or highways are very limited in this country, and it can take a long time to move around without the option of flying. So for that particular reason, we are operating at a vast number of small airports around Norway, where the mission is to connect the small communities. Very often with quite a few people living in these areas, but it's a national policy to try to have the whole country connected. So for that reason, many of the routes we fly are under the so called PSO. regime, public service obligation regime where the where the flight is, is supported by the government financially to be operated

It's a public service. It's like a public bus, basically.

Correct. And this is because our services are vital to connect the country. And it's similar to what you find in northern Scotland, in the Shetlands and other places in Europe like Greece and France, 

Yeah, yeah, there are quite a few of these. Yeah, you mentioned this kind of activity as a public service. And I wanted to ask you how these fit with the national commitment in Norway…there seems to be a big consensus in moving towards this new green economy, as in the whole of Scandinavia, I would say it's a leading region in the sustainability goals. Are you a public company or private? 

We're a private company, a private company

But you are, you've been very proactive in transforming these green goals into a specific program by the industry. And I wanted to ask you about this. First of all, can you tell us about your overall strategy in terms of green aviation, because as I said earlier, you have different programs, and how this fits with the national goals, and what's the relation with other actors in the Norwegian green aviation sector. We had in this podcast, for example, the responsible Avinor, which is the Norwegian Airport Authority, managing most of the airports in the country, which gave us a very great overview of how airports are also very active in the so it seems that there's a very concerted effort by all the aviation players in Norway to move in this direction.

Now, you're absolutely right. I mean, let's talk a bit first about the national ambition of going green. There are, I believe, various reasons, and many reasons why Norway is very much focused on this. One of them is that we are together with our friends in Sweden, and Denmark, as a society very much focused on nature and people are keen to protect everything around them. For instance, it's no today we are afraid of climate change

If someone was used to living in this magnificent landscape you have, no wonder that you would be interested in nature, the absolutely amazing, amazing nature you have there.

Yeah. And we will, and we want to protect it, we want to keep it and also…I mean, it’s a paradox that Norway is also an oil producing country, exporting a lot of oil and gas. And that is one of the main reasons for Norway's economic success. I think on a national level, it's all about now understanding what this transition is and how we can do this in the most sensible way. So that we can convert the economy towards more sustainable means of business because that will happen. And by being curious, by being forward leaning, you put yourself in a position where you can understand first. And I think that is important generally, to all regional businesses that we want to understand early, how we can create new value and make money in the new world of sustainable renewable energy. So there is a national ambition of being successful in the transit from oil and gas to more sustainable options and to build all sorts of business around that. So this comes in addition to the kind of Scandinavian interest in nature and to protect our environments and all those things. So I think that this is a goal which is then transferred into. You mentioned, Avinor, they have the same ambition...They want to be ready to help us go this way. And they have some very strong, strong goals and ambitious goals. And when they set goals, they tend to be very kind of kind of say motivating in the beginning, but if you don't follow them in terms, there are taxes, yeah, So, so we understand that, okay, if the politicians wants to go this way, we have to, we have to do so, as well. And, and also, of course, from a customer point of view, it's important we align with what Scandinavians believe in and what they find valuable. So also to be a company, which reflects their visions of being more sustainable in their way of living is important.

Yeah. But it seems that you've been a company that has gone a bit above and beyond even when compared to other companies in Scandinavia in this field, because we have seen other other airlines, for example, have adopted sustainable aviation fuel purchase policies, stuff like that. But you from a very early moment, because that's not something that came out this year, but it's already been in the making for a number of years already…you've been very vocal in taking an active role in, for example, even in the design of aircraft, cooperating with partners that have been taking an active role in leading this, the design of new tools, like the aircraft, electric aircraft and batteries and stuff like that. And yeah, how is it that you decided to take the lead, because you, obviously you're a large airline in Norway, but in the global context, you are not a huge airline.

Oh, that's true. That's true.

It makes it interesting that you became a referent in the field.

And the reason for that is that we do believe we have a role to play, we have an important role to play, because first of all, the network we operate is probably the best testbed for new technologies. Many of the flights we fly are shorter than 300 kilometers, those scheduled services to connect the small communities. Very often, it's all about jumping from one fjord to another, jumping in and out of an island. Very short trips. 74% of them are shorter than three hundred kilometres, which means that we can do very many of our daily services with the technology being available very soon. So we thought, okay, we have a role to play and we want to, to help the industry convert and transit by being the testbed. But it's also an important part of the story that we are in a situation now where we operate Dash-8 -100 and -200s, on these smaller airports and when you are now approaching a technology transition, you would rather try to wait for the new technology to come along than to invest heavily in existing technology. Yeah. So it's also about lead strategy, this is a a decision we made a few years ago, where we were about to replace the existing fleet with conventional aircraft, but then we realized that if we do so, the normal process of acquiring new aircraft takes a long time and then you are stuck with the aircraft for a very long time. So if we do this, we will be probably operating conventional aircraft until 2040.

Yeah, because the current fleet is due for replacement this decade, right? 

Well, well, the thing we did, because we figured out if we don't want to acquire new old type aircraft, it could be the ATR-42S, for instance, we would need to extend the lifetime of the existing fleet. So in parallel with being very much focused on new technology and trying to kind of be the leading edge airline on new technology, we decided to extend the life-extend the existing fleet. So for instance, we've upped the number of cycles on the Dash-8 in collaboration with the OEM from 80,000 to 120,000 cycles. Wideroe is very cycle intensive, we operate very short flights, so our aircraft typically outflow long cycles before flight hours. So for that reason, we could, with some modification, up the number of allowed flights, of allowed cycles from 80,000 to 120,000. And it may even be possible to extend that even further, those are things we're discussing now. And also, by acquiring more Dash-8-100 aircraft, we could reduce the utilization on average per aircraft. And now we are in a place where we can operate the Dash-8 fleet beyond 2030.

How many aircraft are we talking about?

We have in total 46 aircraft. Those are the E2s and the dash eightsQ-400s four hundreds used on regional traffic and also dash Q-300s, then we have some 25-26 Dash eight 200s and 100s. And those are the ones we're focused on replacing, yeah, by adding a few more aircraft and the number of cycles, we will find a way to bridge this technology transition. And we landed on this strategy instead of replacing them all in the coming two to three to four years with conventional type aircraft.

So the strategy is to replace this aircraft. And in practical terms, you have a partnership with Rolls-Royce, which I think has a facility in Norway, and an Italian aircraft manufacturer called Tecnam. It is going to be all electric aircraft, right? for this segment of the market. What can you tell us about this? What are the timeframes for this project? What's the status? And what are the goals you are aiming to achieve?

We started working with Rolls-Royce two and a half years ago. And the reason why we did so was due, we found Rolls-Royce being the among the large OEMs, the most focused on new novel technologies. And for that reason, we thought, okay, we want to work with them to understand what is possible. This was all about understanding first. I mean, we've had extensive work together. And that put us in a position to I believe before most of the public market knew what is doable and what is not. And in parallel with that, Rolls-Royce was working with Tecnam, and we very early realized that this aircraft, even though it cannot solve and do all the missions, it's based on technology available today. And it's realistic to have it in service in the mid 2020s. So for that reason, we thought, okay, this is something we want to look more into. And it was an aircraft suggested by Rolls-Royce to us that this is a solution that can work for you. And it may be interesting to to do so

This is the battery powered version of an airframe that already exists in production with technology. Right? The Volt, I think it's called. 

Yeah, it's a very new newly certified aircraft. And my understanding is that they were already prepared for this. There will be some alterations and modifications of course to allow for an all electric drive frame. This you have to ask Tecnam or Rolls-Royce, because I'm not an engineer myself. So I don't want to change all the technical details. But yes, the thing is that this can be ready for service around 2025-2026. Based on technology already in the market, that is certifiable in this timeframe. And I think that is a challenge. Many people underestimate the challenge of having their concept taken from the conceptualization phase through prototyping through certification on all the way to enter into service

Norway as a country has a really ambitious goal, I think to make all domestic flying electric by 2040. 

Yeah. 

And to start introducing it no later than 2030. 

That's exactly yeah, that's a goal. 

And I guess that that will involve not only Wideroe, but other other airlines that fly domestically as well. 

Absolutely

SAS, Norwegian, you will think so… 

Yeah. 

That is going to take some serious investment in aircraft for the domestic market then…

Exactly. Yeah. We believe that it's important to start even earlier than that, because from the experience we have with being the E2 launch operator, we know what it takes to be the first one to operate a new aircraft. Yeah, it's very challenging because there are no recipes on how to do things. You have to work with the OEM directly. regulatory body to have everything in place. And if you don't, you end up with a situation where you have an aircraft being certified, but there is no one to operate the aircraft. Yeah. So we have then together with Rolls Royce and Tecnam said, Okay, we need to work together. And they understand that they need to work with the operator to have a proficient user as a certifiable or approved user, at a time when the aircraft is ready. Even if it's a very limited operation, we also believe that the experience we will build on operating new normal technologies from from mid to late 2020s will allow us to, to, to be more successful in entering new bigger aircraft into service in 2030s. Because this is not a new technology, new capabilities must be built, new processes and procedures to an airline, and a lot of new things. So we shouldn't underestimate the time it takes to learn all this.

As you said most of your network is possibly fine in terms of distance and all that. But they're pretty long, pretty long segments in the domestic Norwegian domestic market. I mean, from Oslo to the far north of Norway, from the mainland to Svalbard, for example. Those are flights of over 500 miles and even, I don't know, you may get to 1000 miles, some of them are quite long.

Yeah. I mean, if you flip Norway  upside down around the southern part of Norway, it will hit Italy. It's the same length as the entire continental Europe. So yes, you're absolutely right. That being said, though, the majority of traffic is around the big cities. 

The triangle Oslo-Bergen-Stavanger. 

Yeah, so that's pretty much most of the traffic, yeah.

This aircraft is not only going to be for Wideroe, but once using the market can be used commercialized all over the world everywhere,

We are just a very forward leaning airline that wants to be first to understand what it takes to operate these new aircraft concepts of yours mean, we're not developing an aircraft for sale, we're not taking even part in developing your craft, we're just trying to be the very proficient first user of the aircraft concept.

What's the relationship with Rolls-Royce and Tecnam? You just have some sort of cooperation agreement, but there's no consortium or joint venture or anything like that.

We're working closely together, and doing research together. And we started the Rolls-Royce. And then it led us to be introduced to Tecnam and has become a natural part of this because they are the airframer to produce the small commuter class size aircraft. But then again, our work with Rolls-Royce extends for it's about understanding also other concepts. So we're working very closely. And I think also beyond what we were talking about regarding the understanding what it takes to operate the aircraft. Another role we want to play is to understand first how to build a viable business around this aircraft. Because what we've learned through the work we've done so far is that it's going to be very difficult to just put these new aircraft concepts into your existing business model. Also, the airline must be willing to adapt and to try to find potentially new ways of making the most value out of new concepts. I doubt whether it will be very successful to just squeeze them into the existing business model we have today. We need to be willing to, to think afresh and also try to see how we can make the most out of new technology.

And you recently announced another deal in this case with Embraer’s eVTOL branch, which is called Eve. You obviously already have a close relation with Embraer, you were the launch customer for the E2 family of jets, as mentioned earlier, and successfully operating the E2s, is it both the E190 and E195?

We have the E190

Okay, and now you have this agreement, which I read about. I read the announcement, but there was not much more information beyond that fact that you were cooperating or were planning to cooperate with Embraer Eve. How does the eVTOL technology fit into these regional flights and also the other electric aircraft you are involved in?

It is in my belief that with the eVTOLs being developed, there is some sort of merging between what is today considered rotary wing operations and fixed wing operations and with the estimates of the eVTOL tolls capabilities This, we believe they can potentially do a good job in Norway, even if they were designed for urban areas like London or Paris or, Rio, they are probably capable of capable of doing other missions. Also in the rural areas, they're more than capable of jumping in and out to an island or crossing a fjord. And for that reason, we decided that, okay, we cannot just consider eVTOL as something we don't have interest in, we have to actually look more into how they can potentially service our customer in a different, perhaps better way.

It's like multi-layer to go from the very local to the regional stage, and even to the international with the E2s and other aircraft, you would be able to offer pretty much a door to door wherever you want to go in Norway.

Yeah, and this is I mean, we want to understand what the eVTOLs look like. Because the eVTOLs can potentially do many of the missions we do today. And as you said, they can also potentially do other missions, which may extend our business. There is a debate in Norway going on, and I think it's the same debate in many countries, about whether air transportation should be replaced by road and rail. We want to see a future where people travel more in the air where Air Mobility is the way to go. And if we can solve this sustainability, struggle, or challenge and also find new novel ways of providing the best service to the customers, we believe that’s okay, Air Mobility will be the preference because the service we can provide is faster, and hopefully also at a cost which is acceptable.

Yeah. And use hydro-power. Because Norway pretty much all the electricity is produced from hydropower.

Yeah, some 99% of all power in Norway. All electric power in Norway is fossil free, from waterfalls. Yeah. So we want to be open to see if they can play a role. And with Eve, they also found interest in seeing how this week goes and can be used. This may be a somewhat different application than what most people expect them to do. But my view is that they will enter into service sooner in a rural application jumping from one island to another than from one rooftop to another rooftop in a big city. There are many constraints and limitations in a city, which you don't have in the more rural areas. So we want to explore this together with you how Air Mobility can be redefined. I'd say in Norway.

There are also the maritime and offshore applications as well. In Norway this is another important part of the economy. Yes. I don't know if they have enough range right now for many of these. Well, that's definitely something that the rotary wing is doing now in Norway. I mean, when you land in Bergen, you see all these helicopters taking off all the time for the offshore and maritime and rescue and all these types of things. 

You are right. There are many use cases, which are interesting to look into. Yeah, I cannot tell which one is the most viable one and which books and all that. That's what we want to find out how it also may play a role in mobility?

Are there any time frames, milestones right now in this pivotal aspect of the business, or is at the moment is very early stage?

It's very, very early stage. And I mean, it again, we are not the company producing the technology. But what we're saying that we will if we find this a viable business, we will be the player that is ready to operate the aircraft when the aircraft itself is certified. So again, we want to play the same role being the testbed for a new technology and being the very proficient partner that can build a certifiable or approvable. Yeah, and also the company that can work on developing business models, which fits with these new concepts. And the latter part is perhaps the main part of our role to play, understanding business modeling.

What about sustainable aviation fuel? Do you also have some policies in place? So some goals here?

Well, we say we are supporting all the initiatives going on but we figured that okay, we in our position have a more important role to play when it comes to new innovative technologies. So we very often get this question because we're not too vocal about this. We're supporting it but we also see the research challenge in providing enough sustainable aviation fuels. So we believe that it should perhaps be used more in the areas where it's going to take longer before new technology can allow for zero emission travels. So for that reason, we leave it to the widebody carriers and those traveling intercontinental flights to be more focused on it.

Yeah, you have a better shot at replacing the conventional propulsion with other more disruptive things than other airlines, they don’t have that option. 

Yeah, definitely. 

You were at COP 26. A few days ago, when you were there, you presented something called Wideroe Zero, which I would like you to tell us a bit more about this, because I from what I understand is a sort of, let's say, an entity that is gonna channel many of these efforts and projects that you have in the field of sustainability. One of the goals I had in this call is also to ask you about this Wideroe Zero and how it works. What is it and what goals do you guys have?

Yeah, I'm very happy to tell about Wideroe Zero builds on the narrative we've been talking about so far in this conversation, where we see that in addition to understanding how to implement new technology, and how to make an AOC certifiable for approval, we need to understand how to make the best use of new technology how to build a viable business. And that can be quite challenging in an existing airline or in any existing entity. So for that reason, we figured out okay, we need to carve out and create a separate entity that is free to think afresh. So we call it Wideroe Zero, an Air Mobility incubator, which is free to look at new Air Mobility concepts, be it Eve’s eVTOl or other concepts coming along. And to be free to think with a focus solely on the technology and what the technology can provide. And on the other end, what the customer wants, without having to take existing structures or limitations of existing airlines into account, they can think, think afresh, and try to derive the ideal business model based on those two things. So the whole idea is to kind of be free to think, without all the or the legacy of an airline, you would say, but still, we are so closely connected, that we have all the competencies we need from

Are you an investment entity like a VC or or is it more like something to have some people inside the company to, as you said, think about these things, but but as part of a broader corporate entity, are you guys going to be investing in new technologies, new new startups that might come up with ideas to decarbonize aviation?

Yeah, and I understand the question…for now we'll get to first now set up a team and we're gonna hire this team in the coming months, we will have a smaller team with one group being focused around the AOC and understanding what it takes, one part of the of the company will be focused on user experience, understanding the market, how will the market reacts on new technology is like, you don't really know that you want an iPhone before you've seen an iPhone, right? So we're trying to kind of understand early, how do we think: we have to sell the new service? What is the customer after? And what are the expectations they have about this new service? How much are they willing to pay? So how will the politicians react? What will the taxation level be…all these things and then try to derive new business models and say, Okay, this new aircraft concept with these customer expectations, and perhaps also these expectations to taxation requires us to operate this way. So in the beginning, it's all about trying to understand how the concepts being developed by numerous OEMs can become commercially viable.

It's focused on aircraft development or you would be looking at other pieces of technology that might affect other parts of the let's say, the aircraft ecosystem.

I mean, we will look at the ecosystem and we will understand the whole journey. So that will be the focus to think free of assessing structures. and to see how we can build a viable business around the new concepts being developed. And that is important because if you cannot tell investors how this may become a viable business, it's important to have people investing in them. So then we're, then we have a role to play in not only finding how you can operate an aircraft, but also how you can build a viable business and then invest in these concepts. So we're trying to bridge this. And that is a job we know that Wideroe has huge interest in and Wideroe is committed to look into multiple concepts, and they've requested Wideroe Zero do so but we may also work for others in the future. When we build competence around how these concepts can work, and become viable businesses, we're more than happy to work with other partners and airlines, and perhaps new ventures around that want to go the same way. Because we believe this knowledge is needed to understand the business modeling, not new aircraft concepts,

Obviously, the development of new aircraft, new aircraft types, and like for example, electrification of aircraft, that's a very eye-catching, very disruptive and definitely very important and a very formidable challenge. But there are also I mean, I've been following this space for quite a while. And there's also quite a lot of other other things that maybe are not so visible, like things like software and, and operations, optimization of operational stuff like that…some incubators are now popping up, trying to nurture these innovations and find ways into the industry somehow.

And on that point, I mean, we will look at different areas, not only the aircraft itself, but the ecosystem around if I understood you correctly, for sure, yeah. Because it can be so that you want to you want to distribute in a different way, it could be that the future customer wants an app…we know that the younger people don't use websites anymore, they're used to apps, right, they don't know, they don't log into a web page to buy a ticket, they just want an app where they can see when the aircraft is coming. And when they when there is a service available, perhaps you can look into how new technologies may allow for this different way of optimizing, could it be so that you can have if not fully on demand, but a more like semi fixed schedules, which are more adaptable to the to the actual needs, we will also look into that part of this, how new technology can allow for a different business model. And that's very interesting.

So it's not just hardware, it's it's all the stuff as well

We can’t just focus on the aircraft itself, there are drive trains and zero emission capabilities, but there are also a lot of other interesting things happening with UTM (Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management) coming. Now we want to understand that all this comes in parallel. And I think to be single focused on zero emission is not the way to go, you need to see this coming together with more autonomous systems being in place UTM being developed. There's a lot going on in the coming 10 to 15 years. And it's in this mix of new technologies, we will find a new way of operating airlines in the future.


Yeah, definitely very, very, very exciting times, you guys have so many initiatives in this field…I don't know if I'm missing something here that we haven't covered yet. 

I think we've covered it all. And I think it's going to be more to tell about when we've gotten Wideroe Zero up or running. And I'm looking very much forward to that. So I hope we can catch up and talk more in about half a year or a year or so.

Certainly, in the meantime, for people that want to learn more about this, where should they go, Wideroe Zero? I saw that you had a website, although there wasn't much in it yet.

At the moment, we're setting up Wideroe Zero. So we're starting to hire people in the coming two months. Yeah. So it will be some time before it's all that easy to find. To find more information online you are really very much ahead of the game. Now you're the first one to know, pretty much!

There's so much going on in this field that is getting hard to stay ahead. Haha! Yeah, Wideroe, but what's the website?

For now Wideroe.no. And we will then develop sub sites for Wideroe Zero. That's gonna happen. But you may follow below zero on LinkedIn. That's the first place where we've set up a company page. So follow Wideroe Zero on LinkedIn for now. And there will be more information coming in, in the next month.

Perfect. Well, I think that's a great moment to wrap it up here with some leads that we've given to the audience to follow Wideroe, because although it's obviously a very Norwegian airline, it's got plenty of things to give to the world and to lead the world in this new space. 

So yeah, hopefully. 

Yeah. Looking forward to seeing all these projects, delivering their, you know, the results, and hopefully, they can be an inspiration for other airlines in other parts of the world as well. So, thank you so much. Andreas!

Thank you, Michael. We'll keep in touch and I hope we can follow up this conversation.

Definitely. Thank you very much. 

Have a nice day!

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