AFAIK, the Norwegian transatlantic flights are still restricted to 150 pax. If so, these load factors are not strictly correct.
The reason for the payload restriction is that the ETOPS-120 capable B73Hs don't have the range to carry a full pax load, especially westbound, and the B38Ms are not all ETOPS-120 capable yet, which means some of them need to take a longer routing over Greenland and Northern Canada.
Norwegian's transatlantic ops are being flown by a mix of aircraft with different capabilities and there are no advance guarantees of which aircraft will be available for which route so all flights have the payload restriction applied. On a day to day basis, if certain required equipment is unserviceable, ETOPS-120 aircraft will need to fly non-ETOPS routes.
When I looked last week, only two of the B38Ms (the first two to be delivered, EI-FYA and B) were flying ETOPS routings. The others were either flying non-ETOPS routings or were not being used on Transatlantic flights. I checked a seven day period for all six B38Ms so this didn't look like just a prevailing weather issue. There was a clear pattern.
Over the past seven days, one additional B38M (EI-FYE) has been flying ETOPS-120 routings most of the time.
Not all of Norwegian's B73Hs are ETOPS-120 capable. When a non-ETOPS B73H is used for a transatlantic flight, it is more likely to need to fuel stop. This happened last week, with one flight from EDI needing to stop at YUL.
Now that winter weather has arrived in northern Canada, Greenland and Iceland, non-ETOPS flights could be delayed or cancelled if the necessary diversion airports en route are unavailable.
I wonder whether Boeing is having to pay compensation to Norwegian. I presume the B38Ms were supposed to be ETOPS-120 capable by entry to service but engine problems late in the flight test programme delayed deliveries and appear to have delayed ETOPS-120 approvals of all six aircraft in the fleet. Three now appear to be operating ETOPS-120 routings.
Is it the case that individual airframes need to clock up a certain number of hours before ETOPS-120 ops can be carried out or is there another reason why individual B38Ms have not operated ETOPS-120 routings until quite some time after entry into service?