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"This is a big victory for us and a very big accomplishment for our whole team," told Regional Jet OU management board member Sven Kukemelk. "This is a big and long-term agreement for us. Big namely in terms of what we have to do to provide services to so big a Scandinavian company and do it under a six-year contract."

Regional Jet has not flown ATR72-600 aircraft so far. Regional Jet is in negotiations with seven companies to lease four ATR72-600s, Kukemelk said.

"We see that the market situation is favorable to us now and we don't see a risk for us in this. There are quite a few parties on the market offering this [lease] and negotiations have advanced quite far already," he said.

Kukemelk declined to reveal the size of the agreement. He said that the agreement was free of commercal risk for Regional Jet. "It doesn't matter to us if there's one or 70 passengers on these planes. This is fully a risk for SAS," he said.

The crews of the aircraft will be based in Copenhagen and at least at the beginning the crews will consist of Danes, Kukemelk said. "To find more than a hundred people in Estonia overnight having relevant competencies and meeting all conditions is absolutely not possible. We are trying to find pilots on that market, Denmark, and to operate with them," he said.

While the agreement has been concluded for six years, both sides are entitled to a review of the terms and the price after a period of three years. "I would say that we see this as a technicality and we view it as a six-year deal," Kukemelk said.

SAS announced in December 2016 that it had discontinued cooperation with the carrier Jet Time that used to operate eight ATR72-600s for SAS. SAS then said it was on the lookout for a provider of wet lease that would partly substitute for Jet Time serving regional routes operated with ATR72.

"We have now found the right collaborative partner to take over Jet Time's flights. We look forward to working with Regional Jet OU, which is a competent and reliable partner and a key contribution to our wet lease strategy," Mikael Wangdahl, vice president for external production at SAS, said in a press release.

Since November 2016, when the agreements with Jet Time were wound up, SAS has been working to find a new wet lease operator which can operate SAS's regional services with ATR72s. A number of airlines have been involved in negotiations for the contract, but the choice has fallen on Regional Jet OU on the basis of a number of parameters. Among other things, audits of SAS's quality and compliance monitoring have yielded excellent results, SAS said.

The agreement with Regional Jet spans six years but can be terminated after three. The four ATR72-600s that will be flying for SAS, in SAS's colors, will be staffed mainly by Copenhagen-based crews on local agreements.

Regional Jet OU was founded in 2015 as an independent company, supplying wet lease services to other companies. The company is 51% owned by Nordic Aviation Group (Nordica) and 49%  by LOT Polish Airlines (LOT). At present it operates three aircraft for LOT and five for Nordica and will under the deal with SAS expand its fleet by four aircraft.