One of the most revolutionary airlines is Europe, Norwegian is the third biggest low cost airline in Europe. Its name started as Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS), which was founded on 22 January 1993 to take over the regional airline services by Busy Bee for Braathens in Western Norway. Busy Bee, founded in 1966, was a subsidiary of Braathens that operated a fleet of Fokker 50 aircraft on charter services. Following Busy Bee's bankruptcy in December 1992, Norwegian took over three leased Fokker 50 aircraft, and started operating from Bergen Airport, Flesland to Haugesund Airport, Karmøy, as well as from Bergen to Molde Airport, Årø or Kristiansund Airport, Kvernberget, and onwards to Trondheim Airport, Værnes.

From 1 April 1994, the airline also began service from Bergen to Ålesund Airport, Vigra. By 1999, the company had six Fokker 50s. As it grew its presence in Norway it started looking to expand outside the country for the first time. Then, on 7 January 2002, Norwegian took over the route from Stavanger to Newcastle, flying two round trips per day. After Braathens was bought by Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in November 2001, all contracts that Norwegian had with Braathens were cancelled by SAS, as it wanted its subsidiary SAS Commuter to take the routes over. NAS had an 18-month cancellation period in its contract with Braathens, however this was not respected by SAS; the contracts were terminated without any notice.

This made, NAS react quickly and started domestic scheduled services as a low-cost carrier, leasing Boeing 737-300/500 on the busiest routes to attract more market share. Consequently from 1 September 2002, the airline re-branded from Norwegian Air Shuttle to simply Norwegian.

To expand its presence in Europe the airline looked at opening new bases. So, it opened its second hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport in Poland, flying to Central European destinations,  were two Boeing 737 were based, however the base was closed in 2010. Norwegian announced on the 24 April 2007 that it had bought 100% of the Swedish low-cost airline FlyNordic from Finnair plc. This gave Norwegian a larger opportunity to expand and grow more services from other European countries and compete directly with the northern Europe carriers on flights to Scandinavia and Finland. Due to the purchase, it inherited types such as the MD-82/83 which it flew from 2008, but because those jets were uneconomical to run, they were disposed of one year later in 2009. 

In 2016 Norwegian won its first charter contract in the United States, flying three Boeing 737-800s to Mexico and the Caribbean from December 2016 to April 2017. In July 2016, the airline launched flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle to New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale. Also in July 2016, the airline confirmed it would select the Airbus A321LR (long Range) for it future medium haul flights, to be delivered from 2019. In September 2016, the airline announced flights from Barcelona to Los Angeles, Oakland and Newark in June 2017, and Fort Lauderdale in August 2017. On 20 April 2017, Norwegian announced its second long-haul destination in Asia with flights between London's Gatwick and Singapore  using Boeing 787s operated by Norwegian Air UK. On 29 June 2017, Norwegian received its first Boeing 737 MAX.

Norwegian Air Argentina was established on 25 January 2017 and started operating domestic services in Argentina with Boeing 737-800 from September 2018. Also, in June 2017, the airline announced flights from London to Buenos Aires, to begin in February 2018. During 2018, the airline continued to expand dramatically inaugurating new long haul routes from bases across Europe (Madrid, Rome, Paris, Milan, London) to destinations in Asia, North America and South America. 

To finance its aggressive growth involving the inauguration of many new routes, the hiring and training of new employees, and the accepting of aircraft deliveries, Norwegian sold some of its shares.  Norwegian changed its strategy from growth to profitability in 2018, and in January 2019, the airline announced restructuring measures consisting of the closure of several crew bases mostly for its Boeing 737 operations outside Norway and the cancellation of nearly its entire Airbus order.  On 11 July 2019, the company's founder Bjørn Kjos stepped down as CEO.

On 12 March 2019, the group had grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, after the grounding of the type by EASA, in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crash.

In the early months of 2020, in the ongoing of the coronavirus outbreak, the airline suffered considerably. Norwegian Air Shuttle is widely thought to be the next casualty of the global travel market crash.

History source: Wikipedia.org + Norwegian.com