Norwegian pays gov’t $38.4mn but will seek redress

Norwegian and former bank in legal clash over brand name

Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) is being sued by a bank it once owned over whether it has the right to use the word Norwegian in its brand name, while the bank is the two sides’ ongoing card cooperation.

Norwegian once owned Bank Norwegian, a financial offshoot established in 2007, but in August 2019 as it encountered snowballing economic travails, it sold its entire 17.5% stake in Norwegian Finans Holding (NOFI), the entity that owned it, for a total sum of NOK2.22 billion kroner (USD245 million at the time).

The buyer was Cidron Xingu Limited, a company indirectly controlled by the Finnish financial group Sampo and Nordic Capital Fund IX, run by the private equity firm Nordic Capital. A brand licensing agreement was put in place as part of the deal, which was completed in October 2019.

However, Swedish niche bank Nordax Group acquired Bank Norwegian two years later. Now, it wants to institute a name change to either “Bank Norwegian, a part of Nordax Bank AB” or “Bank Norwegian, a branch of...

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