With Norwegian Air Shuttle’s CEO stepping down, it seems the airline is also taking a hard look at its network, and choosing to slice and dice its long haul network.
Norwegian Boeing 787-9 arriving at Chicago O’Hare – Image, Economy Class and Beyond
So what’s up for the chop? The following routes will shift to a spring/summer operation, whilst being suspended over winter 2019/2020.
- Boston – Paris
- Chicago – London
- Denver – London
- Fort Lauderdale – Copenhagen
- Los Angeles – Copenhagen
- Los Angeles – Oslo
- Los Angeles – Rome
- New York JFK – Copenhagen
- New York JFK – Stockholm
- Orlando – Oslo
Depending on demand, some of these routes might reappear for the Winter 20/21 season. In addition, the following routes have been discontinued inefficiently as competition and load issues come to the fore.:
- Las Vegas – London
- Orlando – Stockholm
The airline will redeploy these aircraft on operating more profitable long-haul routes elsewhere within Norwegian network, as the airline attempts to work out how plans to returns to profitability.
In addition, the airline will up sticks from Oakland Airport, and move its services over to San Francisco International Airport. Both the Barcelona and Paris will join London-Gatwick service which currently operates out of SFO.
In quotes
Matthew Robert Wood, Senior Vice President Commercial Long-Haul and New Markets, Norwegian.
“After a thorough review of our long-haul network and given that some U.S. markets are highly seasonal, it is a natural step to focus our operations this winter on counter seasonal routes that are more profitable, such as Asia, and also looking into growing our South America network,”
An attempt to recover
It seems the mad growth that Norwegian has aspired to in the past is rapidly coming to a stop as economic realities set in.
With a new CEO and some hard examination of the route network, ensuring profitability is going to be a challenge as the Winter season sets in again.
And therein is Norwegian’s biggest challenge – survival..
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I really question their decision to move from OAK to SFO – SFO is more delay-prone and more expensive to operate from. I can understand not wanting to have a split year-round operation, but I don’t see them being able to get enough of a fare premium out of SFO to offset the higher costs and losing the advantage of being the only operator to Europe offering convenient Oakland departures to people in the East Bay.
Where do the planes go? Lots of idle metal in the winter…
I wouldn’t think it’s that many planes – a lot of these routes weren’t daily to say the least. I would had thought redeployment to South America or Asia could be an option.
Or re-deploy them whilst engines are being repaired on the rest of the Norwegian fleet – would save them hiring in aircraft.
Totally agree with the previous reader regarding OAK vs SFO. However, the last few trips we came back with Norwegian in OAK the airport service was a total mess. I am certain that they got enough complaints to move over.
I would suspect a number of these suspensions are to get them out of the subcontracting situations (WhamOS) they’re in until the 787 engine maintenance and 737 Max flight suspensions are resolved.
My casual experience with Norwegian both intra-Europe and international over a half-dozen years has been excellent in all respects. It is only reasonable to offer their very-attractive fares in markets with volume (seasonal or otherwise) and so long as there is sufficient advance notice to customers of seasonal (or other) changes. As a West Coast resident, I can’t help but wonder, though, if there isn’t a better option than signing on with SFO ~ which I’ve personally very-seldom used since the 1970s..