Current world date: January 2002
This is the first post in a series of post regarding Northern Airlines in PW #1474. The airline has simply been maintained since the last post. As nothing major has happened and the world is soon coming to an end I’ll just sum up the history.During the 80’s, Northern Airlines built a strong network at Seoul and established a fully functional hub at Incheon. The airline grew bigger and bigger on the long haul market using medium haul flights as feeder both passenger and economy-wise. During its peak Northern was operating almost 600 routes throughout 450 destinations using a mixed fleet of Airbuses (A320-200) and Boeings (737-200 Adv. HGW, 767-200ER) with its subsidiary Northern Connection operating Fokker F28 Fellowship as well as nearly 15 aircraft leased in to the airline group.
Not only the airline had its peak now; Stockholm-Arlanda also had its glory days during this time. It was the 11th busiest airport in the world, even busier than great cities airport(s) such as JFK and Chicago O’Hare with a total of 748 flights a day.
In 1988 the airline made the devastating decision to close all its routes from Seoul and later Washington after more than 20 years of faithful flights from Dulles. The last aircraft to leave Dulles was a B767-200ER heading toward Zürich, to be flown to Stockholm later. Northern Connection also ceased operations August 1994 and selling off the Fokker F28s.
From there, the airline resumed to strafe toward its vision, which had been long forgotten during the expansion into Asia and Seoul. The vision was to fly the youngest and safest fleet possible but also to deliver the best service possible and first class treatment all the way from booking to baggage retrieval at the last destination – at all times. This had been torn away during the late 80’s/early 90’s but was now to be re-applied to the 105 routes flown from Stockholm.
To be continued
