As part of Norwegian’s strategy of moving from growth to profitability, the company is making several changes to its long-range programme. There will still be several flights between a number of European and American cities. The US flights from Oslo are maintained, while the routes from Copenhagen and Stockholm to the USA and Thailand are discontinued.
In recent months, Norwegian has thoroughly examined its global long-haul network. Based on demand in the various markets, and taking into account the operational challenges with the Rolls Royce engines on the company’s Dreamliners, Norwegian long-haul flights from Stockholm and Copenhagen will be discontinued from March 29, 2020. US flights from Oslo will continue as before. The company is experiencing high demand for routes from major European cities such as London, Barcelona and Paris to a number of destinations in the US, and is, therefore, increasing the number of flights on several of these. New routes between Europe and the US have also been launched recently to meet the growing customer base. Norwegian now offers 50 routes between Europe and the United States and is the largest foreign airline in New York.
“We are constantly evaluating the route network to ensure that we meet market demand and look forward to offering travellers on both sides of the Atlantic more choices and good prices. At the same time, we see that the long-distance market to and from Scandinavia is small, compared to large cities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome. Scandinavia is not large enough to maintain intercontinental flights from Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen. For a long time, we have had challenges with the Rolls Royce engines on our long-haul flights, which means we need to have more aircraft on the ground. This affects the route programme,” says Matthew Wood, Senior Vice President Commercial at Norwegian.
Norway’s long-haul services from Oslo to the United States remain unchanged. The route from Oslo to Bangkok will not be continued during the summer of 2020. The routes from Oslo to Krabi and Oslo to Bangkok are still being considered for the winter 2020/2021 (October 25, 2020, to March 27, 2021).
Norway’s short- and medium-haul routes from Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen are not affected by the changes in the long-haul network. Earlier this autumn, Norwegian launched 16 new routes from Scandinavia, seven of them from Norway. In addition, the company increased the number of flights on a number of routes from several destinations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
27 November 2019
