Primera Air Scandinavia (Billund) has announced that it will suspend its flights from Birmingham, GB to New York Newark effective June 21, 2018, and has also abandoned plans to launch its service to Toronto Pearson from June 23.
The announcement marks the temporary end of the Danish carrier's long-haul operations from Birmingham with it having previously already shelved plans for a service linking the West Midlands city with Boston.
Primera's Birmingham-Newark route was only launched on May 18 and is currently operated 6x weekly by National Airlines (N8, Orlando Sanford) on its behalf using a B757-200 given the delayed delivery of A321neo aircraft.
In its press release, Primera Air said it is offering affected passengers refunds or compensation as well as alternative flights from/to London Stansted with Andri Már Ingólfsson, CEO of Primera Air commenting: “The plans for the transatlantic routes have been in the making for over a year and both Primera Air and Birmingham Airport have put a lot of effort into promoting the new routes, which were welcomed by the region. Unfortunately, we did not anticipate such severe Airbus delays and the prolonged hold-up has forced us to make this difficult and disappointing decision.”
Primera has so far taken delivery of two A321neo against the four originally scheduled. To make up for the capacity shortfall, it is wet-leasing the B757 aircraft from National as well as a B767-300(ER) from euroAtlantic Airways (YU, Lisbon).
Its services from both London Stansted and Paris CDG to Boston, Newark, and Toronto will continue to be operated as planned. Using its B737-800 fleet, Primera Air Scandinavia will also continue to operate out of Birmingham to Chania, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca with plans to resume services to North America again in 2019.
