Norwegian Air Shuttle
Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, trading as Norwegian, is a Norwegian low-cost airline and Scandinavia's second-largest airline, behind Scandinavian Airlines. It is the fourth largest low-cost carrier in Europe behind Wizz Air, easyJet and Ryanair; the largest airline in Norway; and the ninth largest airline in Europe in terms of passenger numbers. It offers a high-frequency domestic flight schedule within Scandinavia and Finland, and to business destinations such as London, as well as to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands, transporting over 30 million people in 2016. The airline is known for its distinctive livery of white with a red nose, with portraits of high achievers or famous figures on the tail fins of its aircraft.
Norwegian's flights are operated by itself and Norwegian Air Sweden, a fully owned subsidiary. Each airline holds a unique air operator's certificate but shares branding, corporate identity, and commercial functions.
Until December 2019, Norwegian also owned and operated Norwegian Air Argentina, which operated domestic flights within that country.
Until January 2021, Norwegian's former long-haul subsidiaries Norwegian Air UK and Norwegian Long Haul operated long-haul flights on behalf of the company, after which both subsidiaries were put into liquidation when long-haul operations were ended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until April 2021, Norwegian utilised Ireland-based Norwegian Air International for European-based operations outside of Norway or Sweden.
On 18 December 2023, Norwegian Air Norway returned its sole aircraft to parent Norwegian Air Shuttle.
In July 2023, Norwegian reached an agreement to purchase Widerøe, another Norwegian airline.
History
1993–2001: Beginnings as a regional airline
Norwegian Air Shuttle was founded on 22 January 1993 to take over the regional airline services produced 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. This included the network of regional services between cities on the west coast of Norway operated on wet lease for the mother company. Following Busy Bee's bankruptcy in December 1992, NAS 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. The company was established and owned by former Busy Bee employees and initially had a workforce of fifty. It was based in Bergen, but later established a technical base in Stavanger.From 1 April 1994, the airline also began service from Bergen to Ålesund Airport, Vigra. In 1995, the company received its fourth Fokker 50s, and had a revenue of NOK 86.6 million and a profit of NOK 2.9 million. It flew 50 daily services.
By 1999, the company had six Fokker 50s and flew 500,000 passengers on 20,000 flights. The company had a revenue of NOK 172 million and a profit of NOK 13 million. On 2 June 2000, NAS bought the helicopter operator Lufttransport from Helikopter Service. In 2000, the NAS fleet was expanded to seven Fokker 50s. From 2 January 2001, several Braathens routes were terminated, including the NAS-operated services from Kristiansund to Trondheim and Molde. The route from Bergen to Haugesund, and Bergen–Molde–Trondheim were reduced.
2002–2009: Emergence as a low-cost carrier
On 7 January 2002, NAS took over the route from Stavanger to Newcastle, flying two round trips per day; this was the first route on which the airline did not wet lease the aircraft to Braathens, but operated the route in its own right. After Braathens was bought by Scandinavian Airlines System in November 2001, all contracts that Norwegian had with Braathens for the routes on the Norwegian west coast 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 notice. Following the purchase of Braathens by SAS, and the subsequent termination of its contracts, NAS announced in April 2002 that it would start domestic scheduled services as a low-cost carrier on the busiest routes. From 1 September 2002, the airline re-branded as Norwegian.The airline opened its second hub at Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport in Poland, flying to Central European destinations. There were two Boeing 737 operating from Warsaw. Norwegian announced on 24 April 2007 that it had bought 100% of the Swedish low-cost airline FlyNordic from Finnair plc, becoming the largest low-cost airline in Scandinavia. As payment for the shares in FlyNordic, Finnair received a 5% share stake in Norwegian.
Norwegian's early success was based on very low cost tickets compared to tickets from other airlines in the same region e.g. SAS. The fleet consisted of rather old Boeing 737-300s, an aircraft type introduced already in 1984, which meant that Norwegian's planes were 10-20 years old. On 30 August 2007, Norwegian ordered 42 new Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with options for 42 more, an order worth US$3.1 billion. This order was later increased by six aircraft in November 2009. In July 2010 15 of the options were converted to orders, and in June 2011 15 more options were converted, bringing the total order of new, owned 737-800s to 78 aircraft with 12 remaining options. Additionally, Norwegian introduced leased Boeing 737-800 aircraft into the fleet. The first leased 737-800 arrived at Oslo Airport, Gardermoen, Norway, on 26 January 2008.
In April 2010, Norwegian started flights from Oslo-Gardermoen and Stockholm to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. During early 2011, Norwegian had three aircraft stationed in Helsinki, and introduced domestic flights to Oulu Airport and Rovaniemi Airport on 31 March 2011. In May, flights to nine additional international destinations began.
2010–2017: Rapid expansion, and long-haul operations
In October 2009, Norwegian had announced that it intended to start flights from Oslo to New York City and Bangkok, for which new intercontinental aircraft were required. In 2010, it said it was considering up to 15 intercontinental destinations from Scandinavia, and would also consider services to South America and Africa. On 8 November 2010, Norwegian announced that it had contracted to lease two new Boeing 787 Dreamliners with delivery in 2012; and that it was negotiating the leasing of additional aircraft.On 25 January 2012, Norwegian announced the largest orders of aircraft in European history. The orders consisted of 22 Boeing 737-800 and 100 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft with options for another 100 of the latter; and for 100 Airbus A320neos with options for another 50. In late October 2012, the airline announced a new base at London Gatwick from spring 2013 with three Boeing 737-800s to be used on new international routes from London to leisure destinations in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Croatia. All announced routes were to be flown in competition with airlines such as British Airways, easyJet and Thomson Airways.
In 2016, Norwegian won its first charter contract in the United States, flying three Boeing 737-800s out of Chicago/Rockford International Airport and General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee to Mexico and the Caribbean from December 2016 to April 2017 for Apple Vacations and Funjet Vacations.
By February 2017, Norwegian had expanded to the point that it became Scandinavia's largest airline. On 20 April 2017, Norwegian announced its second long-haul destination in Asia, with flights between London's Gatwick Airport and Singapore Changi Airport, using Boeing 787s operated by Norwegian Air UK. On 29 June 2017, Norwegian took delivery of its first Boeing 737 MAX, which featured Freddie Laker on its tailfin and was registered to Norwegian Air International. The parent company, Norwegian Air Shuttle, would later accept its first Boeing 737 MAX on 13 August 2018, the aircraft featuring Oscar Wilde on its tailfin.
2018–2021: Restructuring and changes in strategy
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 in Bank Norwegian in June and December 2017, and participated in the sale and leaseback of its owned aircraft.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, as well as a possible revision of its aircraft order books, including the cancellation of nearly its entire Airbus A320neo family order. On 12 March 2019, the group grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, on the advice of the EASA, after the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes. On 11 July 2019, the company's founder and CEO Bjørn Kjos stepped down as CEO. Kjos explained his decision by citing his age and the company's growing need for fresh leadership. Chief Financial Officer Geir Karlsen stepped in as interim CEO. In the past year of restructuring, Norwegian's stock price dropped more than 85% from the previous year, largely blamed on the Boeing 737 MAX groundings. In an effort to delay its bond repayment of $380 million by two years, Norwegian offered its slots at Gatwick for collateral. Jacob Schram, a former gas executive, was named Kjos' replacement as CEO on 20 November 2019 and joined the company in January 2020.
2020: COVID-19 pandemic and seeking of government aid
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Norwegian's finances and operations, and its value on the open market dropped nearly 80% in the weeks leading up to Black Thursday. On 16 March 2020, the airline announced it was cancelling 85% of its flights and laying off 7,300 workers. On 20 April 2020, the airline reported the bankruptcy of various staffing subsidiaries and the termination of agreements with OSM Aviation, each of which were responsible for staffing the airline's flights from its crew bases outside of Norway, France, and Italy, affecting 4,700 workers.On 27 April 2020, Norwegian outlined its plans to qualify for a governmental loan from the Norwegian state, including the conversion of its debt and leasing commitments to equity, its intention to reduce its active fleet to seven Boeing 737-800 aircraft operating solely on domestic routes within Norway, and to postpone operations outside of Norway until March 2021. The airline presented these plans as creating a "New Norwegian", further planning to reinstate additional aircraft and operations as demand would allow, and to ultimately operate between 110 and 120 aircraft, down from the 160+ aircraft it operated before the crisis. Shares in the airline continued to decrease in value in anticipation of the airline converting its debt to equity, which occurred on 20 May 2020, resulting in companies leasing aircraft to the airline becoming the airline's largest shareholders.
On 17 June 2020, Norwegian began adding additional flights for the month of July from Norway to Denmark and Sweden, as well as from Scandinavia to other European countries including Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the UK among others as demand recovered and countries reopened. On 29 June 2020, the airline announced it had cancelled all of its remaining orders from Boeing, consisting of 92 Boeing 737 MAXes, five Boeing 787s, and service agreements related to both aircraft types.
After receiving aid from the Norwegian government, Norwegian had also sought a credit guarantee for a loan through the Swedish government, which the government described as being eligible for airlines with a Swedish operating permit and its main operations or headquarters in Sweden through the start of 2020. The Swedish government had allocated a total of 5 billion SEK in credit guarantees for potential candidate airlines, intending the candidates to be financially viable and essential to the Swedish aviation infrastructure, and noted that it had allocated 1.5 billion SEK to Scandinavian Airlines, which is headquartered in Sweden. While Norwegian through itself and its subsidiary Norwegian Air Sweden collectively had a Swedish air operator's certificate, as well as operations based in Sweden, the airline's application for a credit guarantee was denied by the Swedish government in August 2020; the government claiming that the airline had not been financially viable as of 31 December 2019, before the pandemic. Also in August 2020, Norwegian warned that the company would run out of cash by the first quarter of 2021 if it had not received further funding. In November 2020, the Norwegian government stated it would not extend further government aid to the airline, amidst fears the airline would use the funding to grow its operations that were based outside of Norway. On 18 November 2020, Norwegian sought for bankruptcy protection in Ireland, where most of its remaining fleet was held, in an attempt to restructure the organization which was expected to last five months. During part of this period, Norwegian once again reduced its network to mostly domestic operations within Norway with an active fleet of eight Boeing 737-800s.