Norwegian Airlines will not return their 18 737MAX aircraft to service after being grounded for almost 2 years. After going through restructuring, Norwegian will return to using their 737-800 aircraft that are what the airline was built on. The company claims that this is a cost saving measure as retraining all the pilots to fly the MAX again will be very expensive. Norwegian has commissioned Orix Aviation, an Irish company to sell the aircraft that the airline leased.
This means that after Norwegian restructures in the coming months, the fleet of 140, will be slimmed down to between 50 and 60.
I think this is an interesting move by Norwegian and im interested to hear your thoughts about it. I will link the article that I used down below but it is in Norwegian.
It’d make more sense in the long run for them to keep the 737MAX instead, so they can still fly longer range without their 787s
Along with being the more efficient aircraft
Makes sense considering the financial situation of Norwegian and the fact they’re cutting their fleet down significantly, including getting rid of all long haul flights.
Norwegian did fly the 738 a few times when they had routes from places like Dublin to Hartford, but if I remember correctly, they blocked seats which they didn’t do on the MAX flights.
Thing is that flight isn’t too long. Halifax to England is under 6 hours and the plane can still make it on the westbound leg. Other airlines have longer 737 flights. It’s just the MAX can make it from Europe to further into North America which the regular 737 NGs struggle with
I actually think this is a great move. The airline needs to focus on one thing at a time. They shouldn’t be focusing on both restructuring and reimplementing the MAX. Plus, a huge part of restructuring is about going back to the basics. Basic routes, basic aircraft. There’s a chance they were planning on reducing their single aisle aircraft fleet anyways.
This is a bit sad but looking at their financial situation, I understand why they decided to not put them into service. The best they can do at the moment is to focus on operating a single type of aircraft and to not spend too much money on training for pilots. And yes, Norwegian used NGs for Transatlantic flights.
Very interesting development that shows the extremely difficult situation Norwegian currently is in. Normally it would be the best option to switch to the MAX fleet as in the long run these planes are much cheaper to operate than the NGs. Nonetheless Norwegian apparently doesn’t have enough liquidity to train their pilots for the MAX, which saves costs in the beginning, but will become a financial burden in the long run due to the higher operating costs. It will be interesting to see how the situation evolves with Norwegian who seem to be in an extremely dangerous position financially.
