Norwegian Air emerges from restructuring with wings clipped
Norwegian Air has today emerged from a six month restructuring process, defying those who thought the pandemic would spell the end for the carrier.
However, despite surviving the worst aviation crisis on record, the airline will return to the skies in utterly different shape – and much smaller – than it was before the pandemic struck.
“We have saved an airline that is of huge value to Norway and which binds our long country together,” chief executive Jacob Schram told a news conference.
Last week the carrier said that it had raised the 6bn Norwegian crowns (£509m) necessarily for it to exit bankruptcy protection.
It will operate solely as a short-haul airline, having discontinued the transatlantic operation that fuelled its rapid growth, with a fleet of just 51 aircraft.
Prior to the pandemic, it had 156 planes. It has also cancelled 85bn Norwegian crowns (£7bn) worth of orders from Boeing and Airbus.
Many had predicted that the pandemic would prove too much for the carrier, which has already heavily indebted before air travel ground to a near complete halt.
And while it was undergoing restructuring, several other airlines have made inroads into its new core Scandinavian markets.
Fellow low-cost carriers Wizz Air and Ryanair have both opened new services to Norway, while a new national start-up airline, Flyr, is due to launch by the middle of the year.