Tickets are now on sale for the summer air service between Sumburgh Airport in Shetland and Oslo that will operate twice a week in July and August.

Norwegian regional airline Wideroe is operating the service for the second year running with flights on Thursdays and Sundays from 3 July to 14 August.

Flights will depart Oslo at 1115 (local time) and arrive at Sumburgh at 1205. The flight will then depart Sumburgh at 1230, arriving at Oslo at 1515.

The service carried almost 1,100 passengers last year between the start of July and its final flight of the year on Sunday 15 August.

The airline, a division of Scandinavian Airlines SAS, operated the route using 50-seat Dash 8 regional turboprop aircraft.

Nigel Flaws, Sumburgh Airport Manager, said: “Wideroe’s summer flights were a great success last year with load factors of more than 80%. Tickets are now on sale for this year and we look forward to a similar successful operation.”

Alex Johnson, Commercial and Marketing Manager at HIAL, said: “We believe there is potential to build more east-west air links between Shetland, Scandinavia and the Faroes and last year’s successful summer programme with Wideroe demonstrated that there is a market there for this type of service.”

For flight and booking information visit the www.wideroe.no website.

In the year ending 31 March 2004, Sumburgh Airport handled more than 117,000 passengers and 8,500 aircraft movements.

ENDS