Norwegian Airlines is in Trouble - Could Collapse & Cease Operations

Real World Aviation
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Norwegian Air is in Trouble

Norways airline is in a major financial crisis & lack of demand.
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Source

Norwegian cuts almost all its flights

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Norwegian Air Shuttle has been pulling back from some flight routes. Already it had been reported to be grounding around 40% of its long-haul fleet and to have plans in place to cancel approximately 3,000 departures up to June this year. However, on Monday Norwegian revealed the true extent of their crisis.

Announced by the airline today, the COVID-19 pandemic means it will gradually cancel approximately 85% of its scheduled flights. The airline said that its main priority this week is to maintain as many of its flights as possible to ensure its passengers are able to return to their homes.

“What our industry is now facing is unprecedented and critical as we are approaching a scenario where most of our airplanes will be temporarily grounded. Several governments in Europe have already said that they will do everything they can to ensure that their airlines can continue to fly when society returns to normalcy."

Major Layoffs

As a result of grounding almost all its flights, Norwegian is left with a surplus of staff. This has caused the airline to announce that it will be temporarily laying off a huge proportion of its employees.

In total, the airline says it will layoff some 7,300 staff members, which amounts to around 90% of the total workforce. These layoffs will affect pilots, cabin crew, maintenance and administrative staff. Norwegian is already in discussions with unions and HSE representatives at its bases around its network regarding these job losses.

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Requesting Financial Support

Recently, The airline reached out to the government of Norway, requesting support. The amount of financial support requested was not disclosed, but the airline stated that it needed a decision ‘within weeks, not months’ if it was to survive this pandemic.

What are your thoughts?

This surplus of struggling airlines is taking a toll on thousands of workers worldwide. It is likely that this isn’t going to end anytime soon; and we’re almost guaranteed to see more than Flybe go out of business. How do you think that airlines can survive these hard times?

Video

Here’s the video I created about this. It contains the same information included in this post.

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I do not expect! In less than 2 years, quite a number of airlines went bankrupt and threatened with bankruptcy. Yep, please, not for Norwegian :(

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Yeah. I love their livery! This outbreak is unfortunate.

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F to Norwegian.

Sad to see this airline go, if the Coronavirus does anymore destruction.

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I believe the CAPA or something similar did some studies and figured out that they only have the cash for about 25 more days, which would really be sad if they go bankrupt. Maybe Norway’s government will end up taking control of them or giving them some money, but I don’t think there’s much else they can do to save it 😬

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Norwegian just had a discussion with Norway’s government today. We’ll likely hear something soon.

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I heard they had big trouble already way before corona, so they sure are in danger. Hope for them to stay

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First Flybe eats dirt, then Virgin Australia announces cuts, now this? What is becoming of the aviation industry?

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Oh… it’s WAY more than just two airlines.

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Coronavirus is making for quite a few non-existing liveries in Infinite Flight.

Man, I do love Norweigan’s livery and their ads on YouTube. This would be pretty sad for another one to go down.

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Pretty much every airline :(

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To be fair we have maybe one right now…

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Yeah, but a lot of airlines are getting support from the government (Alitalia).
But for the low-cost airlines… they probably won’t survive this crisis

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That’s only one. And low cost seems like assuming there business model is sound they’re as good as anyone. I feel like there’s been a lot of failed attempts at the low cost model that have made people think there less stable then they really are. Spirit, Ryan Air, dare I say southwest, there as stable as anyone…

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Ryanair and Wizz Air are actually the most well-suited to survive this crisis, according to recent studies, as they should be able to survive for over 100 days, whereas an airline like Lufthansa or SAS is supposedly only going to last 51 days with the cash they have.

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IAG wanted to buy them. If they’re hurting like this I could see something like IAG stepping in to acquire them when this turns around. Would make a ton of sense for IAG as long as they’re in a stable situation.

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Norway’s government just gave Norwegian Air 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($268.5 million)

We’ll see how long this lasts…

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