Interesting thread! Norwegian used to be a "threat" to SAS so I followed the news carefully about this.
Turns out, Norwegian mgmt was fed up with unions and regulations messing with shareholders money and moved the joint to Ireland a few years ago to take advantage of their most liberal taxation rules. Some crew were replaced with non-EU citizens, some had a salary cut. Others were laid off. Since then they have been running a somewhat acceptable circus. Do not expect anything like Norwegian labour laws at NAS! They are entirely non-Norwegian in their nature. Hiring and firing - doesn't matter, they do it with poise and arrogance. Mr Kjos is smiling at the cameras and then hiring Indonesians to do the dirty work.
When Norwegian first started, every other person was sooo excited here in Scandinavia, now we could travel for no money and still all the service! Still, I strongly advised my friends to choose anything else than NAS since it was too cheap to be true. (Of course I more or less forbid them to RYR anything!) Anyway, when it was still in Norway, I could give them the benefit of a doubt, but going rogue into Ireland....? Nah, not cool!
The glory of the moment has faded for Norwegian now. It has NOT helped, all those stranded pax all over the world. Their 787 fleet has had many mishaps, with airplanes having to be flown in to ferry pax to their destination because their designated 787 had "technical issues". It seems to have calmed down some lately though.
737 fleet also some hiccups, I'm sensing they could be maintenance related (because of their nature: lots of loose stuff, lost gaskets, misplaced pins, etc) but I don't have the inside gossip to verify this. Last I heard, some weeks ago, they had an incident with a tank overflowing and jet fuel dripping from the wing. Pax had to wait a few hours, lots of angry faces in the news, especially since this was not the first time this happened to this very flight.
Oh well, just the inputs from an interested bystander. If you don't really HAVE to, don't choose Norwegian. They are not AT ALL what they used to be before the move.
SAS is doing great btw. Last hiring period they had about five applicants per seat. Good times.