First Great Aviation Battle Of The Viking Age

‘Norway’ and ‘cheap’ are two words that rarely go together, yet this Scandinavian country is where Europe's third-largest budget airline first spread its wings: Norwegian. While the legacy carriers continue to moan about the competition from the Gulf, Norwegian is neither moaning nor complaining. On the contrary it is audaciously attempting to fight them and the Big Three in the Gulf with direct long haul flights right into the heart of North America. A special report.

In December 2016, the US DOT (Department of Transportation) finally after months of dilly-dallying approved Norwegian’s application to fly to the US. But the airline wasn’t jetting off from Oslo. It was, in fact, an Irish airline’s application to fly into the US. And many rightly wondered why on earth would an airline called “Norwegian” fly out of Ireland.

In essence that is at the heart of the dispute that both the US and the European industry have with Norwegian. Founded as a regional airline before turning itself into a low-cost operator in 2002, Norwegian was launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks — in a depressed market aviation was a no go. But it has survived and prospered: It flew almost 29.3 million passengers last year to 150 destinations on 120 of the newest, most economical aircraft of virtually any airline.

The Economist summed it up perfectly: “Norwegian Air, with its distinctive red-nosed, white bodied aircraft, each with a portrait of a Scandinavian ‘hero’ on the tailfin — from artist Edvard Munch to actress Greta Garbo — has 120 aircraft. A further 260 are on order and it will be using another Boeing, the new 737 Max, on its next round of flights from the UK to the US.”

NAI’s weapons — the Boeing 737Max8 and Airbus A320neo — come with the sort of fuel burn advantage that means the difference between profit and loss. The company has orders for as many as 350 of these aircraft in place. While trans-Atlantic service has traditionally been operated using large wide-body jumbo jets, the narrow-body jets are cheaper to buy, and cheaper to operate. The first of the 737Max aircraft are expected to enter service in 2017 while Norwegian is expected to see its first A320neos later this year.