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 West Air was founded back in 1962, by the northern Swedish Trader and Coffee importer Anders Löfberg. He used at that time a Navajo PA31 aircraft to travel fast and efficient through Scandinavia to promote his products. 33 years later – 1995- West Air has been purchased by the present owners. When in 1996 the Royal Swedish Mail granted the company various routes to transport airmail within Sweden , West Air discovered their niche market – overnight flights performed by narrow body aircrafts.
As demand for the services grew, West Air operated a steady increasing number of HS748's in cargo version. Having a capacity of 55cbm and a payload of up to 6300kgs, they seemed to be the ideal fleet to perform postal flights.
In 1997 West Air build its own Hangars and Operation Control Centre at Hovby Airport near Lidköping, whereas the cooperate head office and administration was moved to Gothenburg.
The year 2000 was again a remarkable year for West Air, the faithful HS748 was no longer sufficient to respond to the steady increasing demand. BAe's Eurofreighter ATPF the successor of the HS748, also manufactured by British Aerospace Ltd started the conversion in May 2000. Finally the inauguration flight took off in September 2000, and with a great success! The increased capacity of over 70cbm and its higher payload of up to 8600kgs responded perfectly to the market demand in the integrator and postal sector. Soon West Air has been entrusted to operate new routes operated on behalf of Fedex, TNT, DHL and UPS as a feeder service to their respective hubs within Europe.
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 Obviously the development and expansion to West Air lay only in one direction: Southbound! Already in 2001 more than 60% of the operated flights performed by the company were operated on the European continent. The management took the decision to create a daughter company in Luxembourg . Centrally located in the heart of Europe it would serve as a crew base, operational centre and commercially facilitate the contact with our central European customers.
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 West Air nowadays operates a fleet of 11 Bae ATP as well as 9 HS748s, the later will be replaced by the bigger and more environmental friendly ATP's. Our customers expect a 100% reliability, as they themselves conduct time definite contracts, may it be in the express or in the postal sector, our customers will have to rely on their partners. Our efforts on the technical side as, well as continued training of our staff has been worthwhile. In 2002 West Air achieved an on-time performance of 99,27% on all performed flights, the previous year was even topped by 99,54%. Not only thanks to the commitment and dedication of our staff we have achieved these results, but also thanks to continuous conversations with our customers. This in order to develop mutually new products and concepts, may it be in the a specific ‘ roll on – roll off' system for postal trolleys, specific loading requirement in cooperation with our crew or the development of own ULD's to minimize transit times at hubs. Consequently we manage nowadays to on and offload one of our aircraft within 10-12 minutes. This allows us to turnover nightly more than 100 tons of mail at Stockholm Airport Arlanda, just to state one example.
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The airline industry can no longer escape from its environmental responsibilities. Airport are increasingly put under pressure but the surrounding communities to increase the noise restrictions, which will consequently lead to more and more night curfews at European airports. An airline that focuses on overnight operations should under all circumstances face the increasing environmental demands. The choice to operate the Bae ATP was not co-incidental. The Bae ATP complies to the highest noise abatements restrictions – stage 3. Would there be an even higher noise limitation such as stage 4, the aircraft would still comfortably comply with these. Another strong environmental asset is the utilisation of our most modern aircraft engines Pratt & Whitney, having one of the lowest CO2 emission of its kind.
We also have children......
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