David you cant really compare the two when it comes to the fall out from Coronavirus.
Norwegian are far more exposed to it in that they operate worldwide and into nations where the response and measures in place are likely to be less than those of easy.

I will give you that Norwegian are not well placed though to take a 50% reduction in share price.

Norwegian vs Covid-19
 

Norwegian Air shares plunge to 15-year low as coronavirus adds to pressure

Behind a paywall. Guardian link here: Norwegian airlines shares plummet as coronavirus hammers travel sector.

Turbulent times ahead.

Sad state of affairs, it's a dog eat dog out there. Squeeze will be on and Norwegian aren't placed well out there. Hyenas are ready to pick over their bones. Awful state of affairs in our beloved industry.

Norwegian is ripe for picking. The dedicated owners are gone and it is now lead by somebody with litle or no experience from the airline industry and next to no ownership share and that represents no blocking interest.
Anyone with finance and a plan can now scoop it up relatively cheaply as a going concern with AOC's and rights in several countries.
But that three will soon be rich with options and they who are left with readies can then snap up a lot of different bargains within the industry.

Share price has little to do with day to day running of a business. Claims it could be taken over are wide of the mark as would need lots of shareholders willing to sell and it doesn't appear to be the case,

Share price has collapsed worse than the market but er .......... so what ? Everybody else is down and LH has parked 20% of its fleet with many others likely to follow,

Reports say 20 million Norwegian shares traded a day lately, against normally < 1 million, so plenty of willing sellers.
And the rest would probably fold for a low offer, to save something.
Most expects a lot worse news from when traffic and earining numbers legally have to be presented. Many airlines are holding out for the sign of a recovery before they say anything negative. So far sample Norwegian have only said how ok February was and how much they have already sold for March. None have come with real figures beyond that or dare to predict anything about the full year anymore.

And didn't LH announce yesterday increase of capacity reduction from 25% to 50%, including parking all their A380's.

I realise that the long haul flying of Norwegian has probably very few reliably profitable routes. However which parts of Norwegian or which bases have been consistently good performers ? Domestic routes within Norway ? Other routes within the Nordic countries ? Gatwick ?

I know that if an airline pulls a route it means it either makes a loss or just about breaks even, but when an airline has committed to a lot of aircraft it sometimes ends up flying them just because it will be less loss making than a grounded aircraft and thus to recover some of the lease cost. Norwegian has far too many aircraft in its fleet - so continuing to fly a routes does not imply profitability !

I think there is little doubt that this is probably biggest threat to Norwegians future to date, a shame really as they have addressed many of the underlying issues through cuts to cost base, shedding its Argentinian operation and under performing routes. Ultimately cash is king Ryanair has loads and Norwegian not much at all so the fall off in bookings will hurt.

The carnage will be wide spread, if you’re told not gather in groups at school or football matches, then I can’t see people being keen to jump on an aircraft however cheap the seats.

Norwegian should be very proactive cut everyone’s wages by 50% for 2 months, if/when they get through this crisis they
can always pay it back, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

The problem with cutting wages, is that employment law in most European countries forbids it. If staff are on variable hours contracts, you can reduce the number of hours; contract stuff can be cut; redundancies can be issued; you can appeal for staff to take unpaid leave; but non payment or cutting of contracted wages will quickly see the courts getting involved

I hope you never manage any of my current or future employers.

True but if it is done with the employees agreement then it’s legal, of course not all can,would, will agree.

Not sure about that. Monarch implemented something similar for a 6 month period where they cut 10% of all salaries in return for a 4-day week.

If a business cannot afford to pay people the wages at 100% market rate then it does not deserve to be a business at all

What is the "market rate" for flight crew when Airlines are sacking people or going bust ?

If there are lots of people available then market rate drops so therefore should a business just drop everybody's pay to follow suit ?

It is easy to state nobody should take a pay cut in order for a business to survive and quote market rate. What people mean by that is you can never cut pay, when you start quoting market rates you have to accept pay cuts as well as pay increases. This is how market works.

Why attack the pond feeders?

Isn’t it about time that the fat cat bosses took less money out of the business instead of bleeding them dry.

This is where the problem lies. Just look at Thomas Cook.

...and they still went bust

I guess Norwegian are owed quite a bit from both Boeing (MAX) and Rolls (787 engines) issues?

NORWEGIAN SOS PLEA

https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norwegian-on-the-brink/

It’s out of Norwegians control now, there is absolutely nothing that can change the outcome and without immediate state intervention, then to be frank there is little point continuing beyond the end of this week and CEO knows that.

The problem I see ( actually one of a number) is that the biggest cost base is probably LGW long haul and not much of that really matters to Norway, it’s possible that they could break up the company and retain the Scandinavian & Finish short haul fleet, the company has multiple AOC’s so it probably isn’t to difficult slice and dice.

Horrible for the staff, but I can't see Norwegian surviving this.....

Sealink & EFFIS Are you sure 🤔
 

I read this comment. If true it won’t help.

Norwegian moved a large portion of the Company to Ireland to avoid paying taxes in Norway and avoid troublesome Norwegian Labour laws.. Now they want the Norwegian government to bail them out..

If this happens amazing, but Norwegian have underlying finance issues anyway. Let's hope for the best...

If they take it from their Sovreign funds it is the equivalent of less that 1% of the value of the fund......... not even a drop in the ocean.

Norwegian Government bail out
 

It appears that Norwegian have been given a lifeline by the Norwegian Government.

Information in the following link plus British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic

http://www.headforpoints.com/2020/03...ment-bail-out/

Norwegian is split into a dozen companies, most outside Norway. I wonder is the Norwegian government bailing out Norwegian as a whole, or just the Norwegian wing of Norwegian?

Keep it viable will be the thing. Those big loss makers they can cut loose.

Norwegian UK (NUK), callsign Rednose, is the true cash maker for the group. It runs under a UK AOC and employs mostly Brits via agency employment with some having moved over to OSM, Norwegian's in house agency for employment. The company is famous for such shoddy employment practices such as this and it will be difficult to unravel. It would be interesting to see how this works out because the British government sure as hell isn't going to touch this mess with a barge pole.

Sadly, Norwegian represent the end-point of the airline industry in 2020. Low fares, tight margins, sub-standard employment T & C's, and now enormous over-capacity and debt.

I feel very sorry for their employees, but not for Norwegian's founders and top brass. The airline is destined to go under within weeks, although small bits may just be salvageable. (Unlikely)

The customers can't be blamed for greed, although their appetite for unfeasibly cheap fares has supported the idiocy and greed of the airline management.

The future airline world will be a reversion to low frequency, high fare flights, with many fewer and much better-paid pilots and engineers. The lesser-skilled pay grades such as cabin crew, cleaners, and the like, will all be paid as poorly as before. Perhaps worse. Sad.

Well this is going to be the problem in the coming weeks. How do you decide which airline will get a bailout? Why should Norwegian taxpayers provide cash for an U.K. AOC? Or British taxpayers for IAG based in Spain? Or for EasyJet with 150 aircraft registered in Austria?

It’s going to be a real bumfight.

easyJet should not be blamed for that, this folly has it's own name, brexit.

True............

From the latest press release:

Also as well as their rather "suspect" manner of operating, as in AOC's and varying agencies etc., they have the unfortunate problem of being somewhat reliant on two of Boeing's "disasters", 787 with their RR problem and the 737 **x.

Well NUK was only created because of Brexit. Or does that not matter because it’s Norwegian and not easyJet?

Norwegian Air UK was actually formed in 2015, long before the Brexit vote. Their first aircraft B738 G-NRWY was registered in November 2015.
It was always operated on behalf of Norwegian Air International (Ireland) from early 2016.

When the UK registered 787s arrived in summer 2016, they initally operated on behalf on Norwegian Air Shuttle (Norway).
They started operating their own flights (with DI/NRS codes) in October 2017.

KT

I'm pleased that you have taken your time to have explained that. I was thinking of doing the same actually!

If Norwegian needed 2 different commercial banks to come up with a combined loan of less than the eqivalent of 2.5 million pounds to release the first 25 million pounds bailout loan from the norwegian state, it is not looking good for getting their hands on any more of the bailouts because those terms are a lot more stringent.