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Norwegian

Old 28th Apr 2019, 14:55
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In addition, there is the big chunk of psychology involved here. Many people do realize that things are not quite well right now for DY and they may have some doubts while planning. Me too, I could have flown with them a couple of times this year, but finally have chosen another carrier. Still have an option to make a group reservation with them later this year, but... try to accommodate and reroute some 25 people if things go wrong and cover the costs involved... too stressful to consider. Obviously, that does not help the carrier either.
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Old 28th Apr 2019, 15:32
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Originally Posted by intortola
I take exception to this, living in the NE Caribbean, for years myself and many others used BA Club World several times a year from Antigua back to UK. Now, a vast majority of us travel back via Florida or New York to use Norwegians PE cabin. The staff onboard are so much friendlier than BA, despite the fact that you dont get a fully lie flat bed the cost saving is significant. Norwegian have a far superior product to BA these days.
Nobody doubts that Norwegian, when it works, is a great product. The problem is it’s not being sold at the right price. Of course passengers are going to love that but it’s not a state of affairs that can carry on for much longer. They may be described as a thorn in BA’s side but in reality they’re more like a splinter. After all the majority of Norwegian punters are people who couldn’t previously afford to fly long haul, BA were hardly reliant on them to start with. IAG made £2Billion of profit this year (and have been making ever increasing profits ever since Norwegian dipped their toe in the long haul waters) whereas Norwegian are heavily debt laden with a business model that is less than resilient.

Racedo to be profitable they're going to have to raise fares. Especially as they are now focusing on primary airports from the London market. Catch 22 situation as by doing that they’ll be eroding much of their original customer base and going up against competitors who have much greater economies of scale, better business product and frequencies.

It’s great to root for the little guy but there are some harsh realities at work here. I’m not staunch lover of BA, they pay my mortgage and that’s about it. I’m fully confident that they’ll be able to carry on doing that successfully for the rest of my career at least with or without the competition from Norwegian.

Last edited by RexBanner; 28th Apr 2019 at 15:59.
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Old 28th Apr 2019, 16:38
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Originally Posted by Dct_Mopas


Well that’s going to be a challenge. Further 787 issues, Max groundings, cash being raised via rights issues (not normal), rising oil prices, lower demand. This is all at the end of the recent airline boom times, Norwegian need to make profit now. The competition have been making profit, raising cash, paying off debt for years now.
https://www.theguardian.com/business...a-rights-issue

787 and Max issues you will stop paying loans for aircraft until they sorted plus someone else will be picking up the costs and it will be coming all in cash or cash equivalent. Boeing jets were all puchased using US EXIM, basically US taxpayer funded export agency. What will they do ? Reposess aircraft that can't fly and sell to whom ?

The $45 million initial hit will be way more than because the quoted costs are going to get added to massively because of non delivery etc.

One of the reasons Sir Beardy was always first in for new aircraft, never going to be delivered on time and substantial damages paid for non delivery and you then sell your delivery slot.

They couldn't have come at a better time because it buys Norwegian another year with either a huge injection of damages cash from Boeing and RR or loans written off.
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Old 28th Apr 2019, 22:09
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Originally Posted by racedo
The low hanging fruit you mention is young people who haven't yet the wealth of the older generation.

Sitting waiting to pick up a friend at Gatwick today i met 2 people travelling to Chicago with Norwegian, both late 20's and neither have ever flown BA with no plans to. 25 years ago the opposite would be the case as would be hard pushed to find people then who hadn't flown BA.

Now people will fly Norwegian / Easyjet / Ryanair because of cost but will stick with it because they are brands they know and have delivered consistently.

In 20 years time the older BA fliers will be dead or stopped flying, the current users of Norwegian (assume still around) will still be flying and have added another generation used to flying Norwegian / Easy / Ryanair. The recession it was people with money who stopped flying and couldn't justify X thousand on a seat.
I agree with many things that you say Racedo, but I disagree strongly in relation to the last point. BA is a well admired brand and have a huge following. I agree that there are enormous swathes of people wanting to fly Norwegian, but it all about price.

BA can command a strong premium in price, whether from corporates who want the scale of network, with aligned frequent flier programmes, or the higher yielding leisure traveller, or indeed the flier who flies on a BA holiday, there is a huge market for BA.

Norwegian is a great airline, and you'd have to admire the scale they have in such a short time. However, they don't have enough of the higher yielding passengers that they need 'all year round', and this is their challenge, I'd say one of their biggest. The winter months are particularly difficult, to a much greater degree than their Long Haul peers. It is also difficult to achieve significant cost advantage in long haul, where you are not getting greater utilisation than your competitors, where you are using primary airports, and where you do not have a well developed corporate customer base.

I wish them well, but I am still struggling to see how their model is sustainable.




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Old 29th Apr 2019, 10:29
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Norwegian is wet leasing wide body aircraft at Gatwick from four different airlines this week:

The Points Guy UK
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Old 29th Apr 2019, 11:04
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nguba - The leases are for the whole summer to cover 787 maintanance.
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Old 29th Apr 2019, 11:12
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UGH Just seen that my JFK-LGW 30 JUL 11.25am is now on an Evelop A330 - trying to make sure I am not downgraded from Premium
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Old 29th Apr 2019, 11:53
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Norwegian in last week’s schedule update filed leased aircraft operation for Trans-Atlantic service to/from London Gatwick, gradually commencing from the week of 29APR19. Planned leased aircraft operation for Norwegian Air UK (DI) as follows.

Evelop Airlines A330-300 to be used on the early flight/day flight back
London Gatwick – New York JFK eff 03MAY19 6 weekly (DI7013/7014)

Hi-Fly A340-300
London Gatwick – Orlando eff 29APR19 7 weekly

Privilege Style 777-200
London Gatwick – Miami eff 29APR19 6 weekly

Wamos Air A330-200
London Gatwick – Chicago eff 01MAY19 3 weekly
London Gatwick – Denver eff 30APR19 3 weekly

Separately, the airline last week extended Evelop A330-300 service for Norwegian Air International (D8) on following route:
Dublin – Newburgh/Stewart Evelop A330-300 service extended till 14SEP19, instead of 31JUL19

https://thepointsguy.co.uk/news/norw...don-us-routes/
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Old 30th Apr 2019, 09:11
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Originally Posted by nguba
Norwegian is wet leasing wide body aircraft at Gatwick from four different airlines this week:

The Points Guy UK
Just seen that Evelop has just taken or about to take delivery of an ex SQ A330-300 with 30C/255Y seats - this will be at LGW all summer for the early morning JFK.
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Old 7th May 2019, 11:25
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An interesting article on Head for Points about Norwegian cabin crew being required to take leave due to 787 groundings:

Head for Points
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Old 7th May 2019, 14:49
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What’s so interesting about it? Cabin crew in many UK airlines take 4-5 months of unpaid leave every Winter. Ryanair have forced cabin crew to take unpaid leave for as long as I can remember. Pilots in some airlines are being asked to take unpaid leave with the Max groundings.

Nothing interesting about it. I don’t believe anybody is being forced into anything, they’re just trying to temporarily reduce the work force.
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Old 7th May 2019, 20:55
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Originally Posted by Vokes55
What’s so interesting about it? Cabin crew in many UK airlines take 4-5 months of unpaid leave every Winter. Ryanair have forced cabin crew to take unpaid leave for as long as I can remember. Pilots in some airlines are being asked to take unpaid leave with the Max groundings.

Nothing interesting about it. I don’t believe anybody is being forced into anything, they’re just trying to temporarily reduce the work force.
Given Norwegian's perilous position I'd say its very interesting.
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Old 8th May 2019, 17:50
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Reducing the numbers on the payroll whilst some of the fleet is temporarily unavailable would be seen as a wise business move by most people with at least half a brain cell.

Maybe I’m expecting too much though
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Old 8th May 2019, 18:19
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https://www.reuters.com/article/norw...-idUSASP001154

Sorry for ruining the forum vibe with positive news
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Old 8th May 2019, 22:50
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Norwegian is a house of cards. Their most recent accounts bases reduced losses on compensation from Boeing!
Previous accounts have been destroyed by analysis from the likes of Cranky Flyer.
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Old 9th May 2019, 07:56
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Norwegian's April load factor: 86.1%
Ryanair's April load factor: 96%
EasyJet's Q1 load factor: 89.7% [EZY seem to have stopped reporting theirs monthly]
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Old 9th May 2019, 09:16
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Load factor does not reflect profitability. Was it not recently reported that they were making a loss of €16 on every passenger that flies with them..... that's a lot of money!!
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Old 9th May 2019, 14:09
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And you think that means that if Norwegian’s load factor increased, they’d lose €16 for every additional passenger they carried?


Last edited by Vokes55; 9th May 2019 at 21:31.
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Old 12th May 2019, 10:03
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Norwegian have been caught in a perfect storm, some of it of their own making.

The problem with the 787 is well documented and means that between 2-4 airframes are out of service each week due to the ongoing engine issue, the costs for this will likely fall on RR and Norwegian have proactively leased in capacity to avoid expensive cancellations during the summer.

The MAX is also well documented and fortunately it’s this year and not next when the operational impact would have been far higher. There are some upsides however, certain marginal routes such as BGO SWF have chopped and overall aircraft utilisation has increased.

The newly launched Dublin Hamilton route was planned at a daily service, but was cut to alternate days, some rebooking of passengers but the majority accepted a date change and load factor 90% more or less since inception and this being done non stop on ETPOS NG’s

The company is now using LIDO flight planning software which is more accurate than the PPS system ( although PPS always used LIDO data for long haul flights) but is now better optimised for these Atlantic routes.

Winter will be the big challenge, whilst I wouldn’t describe pilot resignations as a mass exodus it is certainly at a far higher level than I have seen over the last two to three years, driven by Norwegian uncertainty and job opportunities elsewhere, I expect this will continue into the summer period. I think it’s likely that further temporary reductions in pilot hours will be required over the winter period and until the re introduction of the MAX timescale is known.

If Norwegian avoids another calamity of its own making or external market conditions then I would expect to see a slow recovery towards profitability going forward, but I think another loss is 2019 is now likely
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Old 12th May 2019, 13:55
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Originally Posted by EIFFS

If Norwegian avoids another calamity of its own making or external market conditions then I would expect to see a slow recovery towards profitability going forward, but I think another loss is 2019 is now likely
I would see losses in 2019 BUT there is going to be a huge cash flow benefit in that RR and Boeing will be paying sizeable compensation, the 45 million quoted will not even be close to the final figure, lost profitability, damage to brand, management time etc etc. Cash cost I would expect to be close to this years rights issue.

Events not of your own making can change an airlines future...... 9/11 and Ryanair for an example.

Also from a passenger point of view they are a bit more forgiven when it is not airline causing the issue but manufacturer.
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