Braathens Regional Aviation: ATR Operator Built Around SAS Wet-Lease

Braathens Regional Aviation (marketed as BRA Braathens Regional Airlines, IATA code TF, ICAO code BRA) is a Swedish regional operator headquartered in Stockholm. For most of its life it was best known as a domestic passenger carrier flying turboprops out of Stockholm Bromma, the city-close airport. Since late 2024 and through 2025, the company has undergone one of the most significant transformations of any European regional airline: it has closed down its own scheduled network and reinvented itself as a dedicated wet-lease (ACMI) provider, flying almost exclusively for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Any pilot evaluating BRA today needs to understand this pivot, because it changes almost everything about the job, from route structure to job security.

The operational roots of the airline trace back to Malmö Aviation, founded in 1981, which built Bromma into a specialist base for frequent, business-oriented domestic flights. In February 2016, Malmö Aviation and several smaller regional brands operating under the Sverigeflyg umbrella were consolidated under a single commercial identity: BRA, a name that conveniently means "good" in Swedish. At its peak, BRA carried roughly one third of Sweden's domestic passengers and operated around thirteen domestic routes, according to industry profiles of the carrier. The corporate structure separates the commercial "virtual airline" entity (BRA Sverige AB) from the operating company that holds the Air Operator Certificate and the aircraft (Braathens Regional Aviation AB, also referenced as Braathens Regional Airways). Pilots are employed within this operating group rather than the sales brand.

The airline sits inside the Braganza group, a privately held investment company associated with the Braathen family (Per G. Braathen), whose aviation heritage stretches back to the original Braathens carriers in Norway. Private ownership means BRA is not subject to stock-market disclosure, so precise revenue and pilot-headcount figures are not published. Workforce-data provider Revelio Labs lists roughly 660 employees at Braathens Regional Aviation AB for 2025, down from around 1,100 in the pre-pandemic era, a figure that includes pilots, cabin crew, engineering, and administration. As a comparison point on the airline's official identity and open positions, the Braathens careers page remains the authoritative source for current recruitment.

The single most important thing to understand about BRA as an employer is that it is no longer a scheduled airline in the traditional sense. It is an ACMI operator, meaning it supplies Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance to another airline, which handles the flight numbers, ticket sales, network, and commercial risk. When you fly for BRA today, passengers board what they believe is an SAS flight. That distinction shapes pay, roster culture, uniform standards, and the stability of the whole operation.

The pivot happened quickly. In September 2024, SAS and Braathens announced a long-term wet-lease partnership, reported in secondary sources as a seven-year contract worth around SEK 6 billion, under which BRA would operate ATR 72-600s for SAS out of Stockholm Arlanda to strengthen SAS's Swedish domestic connectivity. To make room for that shift, BRA discontinued its own scheduled routes: reporting indicates it ceased selling its own scheduled passenger flights around the turn of the year, ending its independent network by December 2024 / 1 January 2025. The SAS partnership was confirmed on the SAS Group newsroom, and BRA grew its ATR fleet from 14 to 17 aircraft to serve it.

Two further developments reshaped the picture in 2025. First, BRA's separate jet arm (operating Airbus A319/A320 aircraft through the entities Braathens International Airways AB and Braathens Crew AB) filed for bankruptcy on 30 September 2025, and all Airbus flight operations were discontinued immediately. Second, the core ATR company entered a Swedish financial reorganisation (företagsrekonstruktion), approved by Solna District Court in early October 2025 and later extended toward April 2026, with the stated aim of managing the transition costs of becoming solely an ACMI supplier. Then, on 15 December 2025, Austrian Airlines terminated its ATR wet-lease with BRA with immediate effect, citing a failure to meet Lufthansa Group wet-lease standards. That left SAS as the dominant remaining customer.

For a pilot, the practical reading is straightforward. The near-term flying is likely stable because SAS needs domestic Swedish capacity and BRA is contracted to provide it. The medium-term outlook carries more uncertainty than a large flag carrier would, because the business now rests heavily on a single relationship and is being run through a formal reorganisation process. Neither of those facts makes BRA a poor employer, but they do make it a different kind of bet than joining SAS, Widerøe, or a Gulf carrier.

BRA now operates a single-type fleet: the ATR 72-600 turboprop. Fleet databases including ch-aviation and Wikipedia consistently report 17 ATR 72-600 in service by 2025 into 2026, with an average age of roughly eight years. There are no ATR 72-500s left in current fleet summaries, and, following the September 2025 Airbus bankruptcy, no Airbus A319 or A320 jets remain in the group. The airline's own fleet page still shows a slightly older count, but the current databases and the SAS ACMI expansion put the number at 17.

The ATR 72-600 is a modern twin-engine regional turboprop seating around 72 passengers, with a glass cockpit and strong short-field performance that suits airports like Bromma and short Nordic sectors. BRA markets itself as operating one of Europe's larger dedicated ATR fleets and leans heavily on the type's environmental credentials: ATR turboprops burn substantially less fuel per seat than comparable regional jets on short routes (the manufacturer commonly cites around 40% lower CO2 per seat versus a regional jet). BRA holds ISO 14001 environmental certification and has signed an ATR Global Maintenance Agreement (GMA), a fleet-wide support and spares programme that helps sustain dispatch reliability. You can review the type on the airline's own ATR 72-600 fleet page.

Fleet data as of late 2025 into early 2026, compiled from ch-aviation, Wikipedia, and company sources. Numbers are approximate and subject to ongoing restructuring.

Looking further ahead, BRA has positioned itself at the front of Nordic sustainable-aviation discussions. It sits on the Industry Advisory Board of Heart Aerospace, the Swedish developer working on a regional electric aircraft with a reserve-hybrid configuration. This is a signal of intent rather than a fleet plan: any electric type is years from line service, and the ATR 72-600 will remain the aircraft you actually fly for the foreseeable future. Still, for pilots who care about the environmental direction of the industry, BRA's turboprop-and-electric positioning is a genuine part of its identity.

BRA does not publish its pilot pay scales. Compensation is set by the collective agreement between the pilot union Svensk Pilotförening (SPF) and the employer association Svenska Flygbranschen (part of Transportföretagen), a pilot agreement that was renegotiated and signed in February 2026. Because the full text is not public, the figures below are the best available indicative data, drawn from the pilot-pay aggregator Pilot Jobs Network and from Swedish national salary statistics. Treat them as an order-of-magnitude guide, not a contract.

The clearest published dataset comes from Pilot Jobs Network, which lists an ATR pay scale for BRA by year of service. The figures are unlabelled by currency, but their magnitude and formatting are most consistent with annual gross salary in euros for a European regional turboprop operation. On that basis, a First Officer scale runs from roughly €25,000 in year one up toward €44,000 at the top of the scale, while a Captain scale runs from around €40,000 to €58,000. For Swedish context, Statistics Sweden data (reported by Euronews) put the average monthly pay for pilots in Sweden at about kr 71,200 in 2023, roughly kr 854,000 per year, which sits well above these regional-turboprop numbers, as you would expect for an average that includes jet and widebody captains.

ATR First Officer & Captain Pay Scale (indicative)

Figures reported by Pilot Jobs Network, best interpreted as annual gross euros. At roughly 11 SEK per euro, the Captain top of scale (~€58,000) is on the order of kr 640,000 per year. Actual BRA pay is governed by the SPF collective agreement and is not fully public.

Two points deserve emphasis for anyone weighing these numbers. First, regional turboprop pay across Europe genuinely sits below narrowbody and widebody jet pay, so relatively modest headline figures are normal for the segment rather than unique to BRA. Second, gross salary is only part of the Swedish picture: employer-paid occupational pension contributions, strong statutory leave, parental benefits, and social protections add meaningful value that a raw salary comparison misses (covered in the Benefits section). Even so, on cash compensation alone, BRA is not a high-paying employer by European standards, and pilots motivated primarily by earnings would likely look to larger jet operators.

BRA flying is short-haul, turboprop, and predominantly domestic Swedish for the SAS operation, with additional bases at Copenhagen and (tied to the now-terminated Austrian contract) Vienna. This is fundamentally home-based flying: multiple short sectors in a duty day, with crews typically returning to base rather than sitting long-haul layovers in distant cities. For pilots who value sleeping in their own bed and avoiding chronic jet lag, that is a genuine quality-of-life advantage. The trade-off is a high number of take-offs and landings, early starts, and the operational intensity that comes with four or more legs a day in Nordic weather.

Rostering is governed by three overlapping frameworks: EASA Flight Time Limitations (FTL), Swedish labour law, and the SPF collective agreement. Under standard EASA FTL, pilots are capped at roughly 900 block hours per calendar year and 100 hours in any 28 consecutive days, with duty limits that tighten as the number of sectors rises and minimum rest requirements between duties. BRA's 2026 recruitment explicitly offers a choice between fixed roster patterns with commuting options and flexible roster solutions, with the exact structure depending on base and collective agreement. The commuting option is significant: it is designed to let pilots live away from base and travel in for blocks of duty, which broadens the geographic pool of candidates.

Representative short-haul ATR pattern for illustration only. BRA does not publish its exact roster patterns, and actual schedules vary by base, roster type (fixed or flexible), and collective agreement.

On days off and leave, Swedish statutory rules set a floor of 25 paid vacation days (five weeks) per year, and pilot collective agreements typically build on that. Monthly days off are not published by BRA and depend on the roster line, but short-haul European turboprop operations commonly deliver somewhere in the range of ten to fourteen days off per month within FTL and agreement limits. The recent union dispute (see the Industrial Relations section) centred precisely on roster protections: work on days off, changes to published duty programmes, and overtime. That tells you rostering discipline is a live issue at BRA and one worth asking pointed questions about at interview.

Where BRA's headline salary looks modest, the Swedish social and occupational framework does a lot of quiet work to close the gap. Pilots on Swedish contracts benefit from one of Europe's more comprehensive employee-protection systems, layered on top of whatever the SPF collective agreement adds. As with pay, BRA does not publish a detailed benefits brochure, so the picture below combines what is standard for Swedish collective-agreement employees with the airline-specific points that are documented.

The centrepiece is the Swedish occupational pension, tjänstepension, most commonly the ITP scheme administered through Collectum. For younger pilots this is typically ITP 1, a defined-contribution plan where the employer pays 4.5% of monthly salary up to a ceiling (around kr 52,125 per month) and a much higher 30% on salary above that ceiling. Older employees may fall under ITP 2, a defined-benefit plan calculated on final salary. Crucially, the employer funds the premiums, and the accrued pension is portable within the Swedish labour market. You can read the official mechanics on the Collectum ITP pension pages. This sits on top of the Swedish state pension (allmän pension).

Career progression at BRA has to be understood through the lens of a single-type, wet-lease operation. There is one aircraft (the ATR 72-600) and one broad flying role, so the classic legacy-carrier ladder from narrowbody to widebody, or from short-haul to long-haul, simply does not exist here. Progression is essentially First Officer to Captain on the ATR, plus specialist tracks such as training or management for a minority of pilots.

Like most European airlines, BRA operates on a seniority basis for bidding and progression, and pay rises with years of service per the collective agreement. The important nuance for 2026 is that BRA is actively recruiting Direct Entry Captains from outside, alongside First Officers, and requires candidates to already hold a current ATR 72-600 type rating. Direct-entry command hiring is good news if you arrive as an experienced captain, but it can slow the internal upgrade path for existing First Officers, because command seats are partly filled from the external market rather than exclusively from within. BRA does not publish an average upgrade time, and in a small airline undergoing restructuring, that timeline is genuinely hard to predict.

Progression is single-type on the ATR 72-600. There is no in-house jet or widebody path following the closure of the Airbus operation.

BRA's current recruitment is aimed squarely at experienced, type-rated pilots, not ab-initio cadets. The 2026 campaign, published through the airline's official channels, states that BRA finalised training plans for spring 2026 and is recruiting Direct Entry Captains and First Officers on the ATR 72-600, with the next course scheduled to start in January and bases at Copenhagen, Vienna, and Stockholm Arlanda. The standout requirement is that applicants be current ATR 72-600 type rated. There is no advertised cadet or fully-sponsored ab-initio pathway in this campaign, which is a meaningful difference from a legacy carrier's cadet scheme.

BRA does not publish numeric flight-hour minimums in its public posts, so any specific hour thresholds should be treated as unconfirmed. What can be stated firmly is the regulatory floor for this kind of European multi-crew turboprop operation, plus the one explicit BRA requirement (a current ATR rating). The rest, exact total-time and PIC minimums, is best confirmed directly with BRA recruitment.

Requirements (confirmed and standard)

How The Process Typically Runs

To put BRA in context, it helps to compare it with two reference points a Scandinavian regional pilot would realistically weigh: Widerøe, Norway's established regional turboprop and regional-jet operator, and SAS, the pan-Nordic flag carrier that is also BRA's principal wet-lease client and the biggest competitor for pilot talent in the region. Scores below are editorial estimates across the same metrics used in the scorecard, based on publicly available data, union information, and industry benchmarks.

Key Takeaways from the Comparison

SAS leads on pay and fleet breadth. As a flag carrier with Airbus narrowbodies and A350 widebodies, SAS offers higher earning potential and a genuine jet and long-haul career, which neither regional turboprop operator can match. It emerged from a Chapter 11 restructuring in 2024 under new ownership, so its job-security score is solid but not bulletproof.

Widerøe is the benchmark for a stable regional career. With around 50 aircraft (De Havilland Dash 8 turboprops plus newer Embraer E190-E2 jets), roughly 400 pilots, and multiple Norwegian bases, Widerøe offers more fleet variety and a well-defined collective agreement (its 2023 to 2026 pilot deal includes annual increases and profit-sharing, per published summaries). Its position on essential-service routes gives it a resilience BRA currently lacks.

BRA's relative strengths are lifestyle and simplicity, its weakness is security. Home-based short-haul flying, a modern single-type ATR fleet, and Sweden's strong social framework are real positives. But on the two metrics that matter most to a cautious job-changer, salary and job security, BRA scores lowest of the three, reflecting regional-turboprop pay and the ongoing financial reorganisation plus single-client concentration risk.

Swedish aviation is heavily unionised, and BRA is no exception. The pilots are represented by Svensk Pilotförening (SPF), the Swedish Pilot Association, internationally referred to as Swedish ALPA. SPF negotiates the pilot collective agreement (pilotavtal) with the employer association Svenska Flygbranschen, part of the Transportföretagen employer federation. SPF also represents SAS's Sweden-based pilots, so it is the single most important pilot body in the Swedish market. Its official presence is at swealpa.se, and it is affiliated internationally with the European Cockpit Association (ECA) and IFALPA.

How Pilot Bargaining Works At BRA

The framework governing pilot conditions is a layered one: Swedish labour law (which strongly protects employees), EASA Flight Time Limitations, and the SPF collective agreement. That combination gives pilots meaningful protection against unilateral changes to pay and rosters, but it also makes the corporate structure of a group like Braathens a recurring flashpoint, because which legal entity actually employs the pilots affects which agreement and which protections apply.

Recent Disputes & Restructuring Events