Norwegian adds wet-leased A321

Norwegian to reopen base in Palma de Mallorca, Spain

As part of its “expansion” set for next year, Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) will reopen its operating base in Palma de Mallorca starting in the summer of 2024, it announced in a statement on its website on June 15.

It previously operated a base at the Mallorcan airport starting in 2016, only to close it in October 2019 amid sweeping cost cuts.

This time, the Palma base will be seasonal, to be operating during the summer seasons only. Norwegian also confirmed the continuity of its base at Barcelona El Prat - also seasonal - for the same summer season of 2024.

Palma will be Norwegian’s fourth operating base in Spain, along with Alicante and Malaga (both permanent, twelve months a year, under its Norwegian Air Sweden AOC) and Barcelona (seasonal), ch-aviation fleets advanced data shows. Outside Spain, the company will also open, in 2024, a permanent operating base at Riga, Latvia.

Norwegian has said it plans to operate a fleet of 85 aircraft in...

Norwegian confirms Riga, Latvia base for 2Q24

Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) has suspended its plans to open a base at Riga airport until the summer season of 2024, the airline confirmed to Latvian public broadcaster Latvijas Televīzija on May 20.

The budget carrier announced last October that it would open a base in the Baltics ahead of the Summer 2023 season as “kind of a test” to trial growth outside its core markets of the Nordic countries and Spain. But in January it said it had postponed the plan by one year due to challenges with aircraft deliveries from Boeing.

“We had big plans for this season and one of them was to open a base in Riga, but due to delays in the delivery of new aircraft the opening of the base is currently postponed until next year,” Grete Kruse Roald, the airline’s vice president for communications told the television channel.

She underlined, however, that “we see that the Latvian market is showing a good pace of recovery and demand is growing. This market is very...

Norwegian eyes “alternative” to Copenhagen due to delays

Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) is considering shifting its flight operations away from Copenhagen Kastrup Airport to a nearby alternative as staff shortages continue to cause delays at the Danish hub.

A dispute between air traffic controllers, represented by their union, and the state-owned air traffic service Naviair, their employer, has exacerbated a growing shortage of the specialists, resulting in delays for hundreds of thousands of passengers in recent weeks.

The low-cost carrier has reportedly expressed its frustration over the matter to the Danish government and has also discussed the matter with Nordic rival SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup), according to the news agency Ritzau.

“We have to look at alternative airports that are close to Copenhagen Airport,” Norwegian CEO Geir Karlsen told the newswire. “I don’t know whether that will be possible at such short notice, but this conflict is cause for increasing concern and that concern will grow as capacity increases during the summer.”

According to the ch-aviation capacities module, Norwegian Air Sweden AOC (D8, Stockholm...

Norwegian mulls Canaries bases, makes Barcelona year-round