Vokes55 quite frankly you’re embarrassing yourself. You’re a complete caricature and becoming beyond parody. You do realise the irony in calling out people as willy-wavers making assumptions about people they don’t know and in the same breath going on the attack about BA’s “six trips a month”. None of which applies to me.
For the record we’ve seen an emergency rights issue and putting up their Gatwick slots as collateral in a push to delay repayment of bonds. Add to that the retrenchment of the airline throughout Europe and cancellation of routes and credit card companies withholding payments added to the current news contained within this thread. None of which paint a rosy picture of the financial situation at the airline. The total liabilities they are sitting on (over £6Billion) are eye watering. Now you can point out these are moves to stabilise the airline’s economic situation but, if you do, you are conceding that the economic situation was bad to begin with and the airline has been (up to this point) grossly mismanaged. Which illustrates the point that many of us commentating on Norwegian’s financials have been making all along. You can’t have it both ways I’m afraid Vokes, if these measures are being taken it’s because the business model was completely bogus.
I know you and others in the past (before the extension of the bond deadline and the rights issue) have been glossing over the debt situation by saying the debt was needed for expansion. Now the company are realising that trying to grab market share and grow into profitability is absolutely impossible at the fares that Norwegian charge with their level of overheads. The business model has been flawed the entire way along and if they couldn’t do it at a time when the aviation industry as a whole has been reporting record profitability then God knows how bad it’s going to be in a world economic recession.
Norwegian are not in a good place Vokes. Believe it or not I don’t take any great pleasure in that largely because - as we’ve seen with recent events at Thomas Cook - it isn’t pleasant when our colleagues in other airlines are put out of work. I’ve been through it myself. It’s not pleasant when people speculate in a negative fashion and you might not like what you hear (for whatever reason) but acting like a spoilt child, sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming and shouting all you like doesn’t change that reality and should not stifle the debate about a company in genuine difficulty and Norwegian are definitely in this category.