I am not so sure. The expansion was a race to get the economies of scale required to be able to compete. The days where small low cost airlines could compete are long gone so they HAD to grow or disappear. I would not read too much into the Low Cost long haul. I have used it and is not specially low cost. The low cost tag drives a lot of business to their website so is probably just a clever marketing ploy . Having said that they did try to expand into way too many new markets way too fast and launching a long haul airline is phenomenally expensive. Norwegians have big pockets and a large airline is a good hedge against a large oil company, what people fail to realise is that the Airbus order was to run an aircraft lease business -not to operate- you don't even think of an aircraft lease business without some serious financial backing . I think the CEO is no fool, he has followed a very high risk strategy which may or may not pay off but it has been a conscious decision.