Widerøe

Is Widerøe safe?

Yes. Widerøe, Norway's regional airline, has not had a fatal accident since 1993 and has not written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary an aircraft since 2005, on a network of about 120,000 flights a year. We score it 83. That is below its owner Norwegian at 89, and the gap has little to do with the crews. It comes from what Widerøe flies and where: turboprops built in the early 1990s, landing on short runways in some of the windiest places in Europe.

The airports are the hard part

Widerøe exists to serve places other airlines skip. Many of its domestic routes go to short-field airports along the coast of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, with mountains close by and weather straight off the Norwegian Sea. Several of its bases run STOL operations, built around aircraft that can land on short strips. A typical day can include five or six take-offs and landings for one aircraft.

That is where the airline's history sits. Its fatal accidents in the 1980s and 1990s, at Gamvik, Brønnøysund, Værøy and Namsos, all involved wind, terrain or night approaches in bad weather. Norway's investigators and the airline changed a lot after them, and Widerøe now applies its own wind limits that are tighter than the aircraft's at some airports. The 2010 accident at Sandnessjøen shows why: a gust hit a Dash 8-100 just as it touched down, the right main gear collapsed, and the crew kept it on the runway. Nobody was hurt, and the aircraft was repaired.

In February 2023, six incidents at Tromsø in one day of heavy snow and wind led the NSIA to study whether winter weather in the north is getting worse. Its 2026 thematic report found no clear trend, but it describes flying there in winter as inherently demanding. We agree, and that is why the environment scores 68.

Two incidents that pointed at procedures

Most of Widerøe's recent events were technical and handled well: engine shutdowns, a cracked windshield, a smoke smell. Two were different, because the NSIA found weaknesses in the airline's own procedures.

• Bergen, 20 January 2020. A Dash 8-300 climbing out of Kristiansund flew into severe icing. On approach to Bergen, ice broke off the engine inlets and both engines lost power, one of them twice. Automatic ignition restarted them and the crew landed safely. The NSIA praised the crew but found shortcomings in Widerøe's documentation for flying in icing.
• Svolvær, 22 December 2022. After holding while the runway was cleared of snow, the crew of a Dash 8-100 forgot to set the local altimeter pressure and were flying 700 feet lower than they thought. The terrain warning went off 3.1 nm from the runway; they climbed away and returned to Bodø. The NSIA said the checklists were less independent of each other than they looked.

Two more investigations are open. On 4 November 2024 a Widerøe Dash 8 and a Bristow S-92 helicopter got close enough at Hammerfest for both to get collision-avoidance alerts. On 26 July 2025 the right main gear of a Dash 8-100 jammed on approach to Trondheim and came down only in the final minutes before a planned partial-gear landing; the NSIA has already asked De Havilland to deal with the gear-door hinge fault on Dash 8 Classics that lack a later modification. In March 2023 a Q400 also left Sandefjord without the fuel it was meant to take on, and the crew turned back. We score incidents at 76, close to the 78 that SAS gets on the same factor.

How old is the Widerøe fleet?

Old, and it will stay that way for a while. At the end of 2025 Widerøe had 51 aircraft: 30 Dash 8 Classics (the -100, -200 and -300), 18 Dash 8-400s and 3 Embraer E190-E2 jets. The Classics that appear in accident records were built between 1990 and 1995. Instead of replacing them, Widerøe was the launch customer for a De Havilland programme that inspects, modifies and certifies Dash 8-100s for up to 160,000 flight cycles, and in July 2026 it added four more aircraft to it, for 14 in all. The owner's annual report says these aircraft are due for replacement before 2040.

An old aircraft is not unsafe if it is maintained properly, and the Classics' record in Norway since the 1990s is good. But our fleet factor measures age and modern equipment, and here Widerøe scores 58, well below Norwegian's all-737 fleet.

Flying Widerøe: what to know

• Delays and cancellations in the north are often weather. A cancelled flight to a small coastal airport in a gale is the system working, not failing.
• Keep your belt on. Short flights spend most of their time climbing or descending through rough air close to the mountains.
• Expect small aircraft. Many domestic flights use 39-seat Dash 8-100s or -200s, so overhead space is tight.

How we scored it

Oversight (92) and the accident record (93) carry Widerøe: Norwegian and EASA oversight, IOSA registrationIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary and no fatal accident since 1993. The fleet (58) and the environment (68) pull it down, and two NSIA findings against its procedures hold incidents at 76. Overall 83, below Norwegian and SAS and ahead of Scotland's island airline Loganair.