Arctic Aviation Assets, a subsidiary of Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen), reached agreements with both Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and Boeing (BOE, Washington National) to defer deliveries of narrowbody aircraft. The carrier will save USD2.1 billion in capital expenses in 2019 and 2020 in total as a result.

"Based on ongoing discussions, the Company has reached an agreement with Boeing to postpone the delivery of fourteen B737 MAX aircraft originally due for delivery in 2020 and 2021," Norwegian said in a stock market filing.

Regarding the agreement in principle with Airbus, Norwegian was less specific and said only that it includes both A320-200neo and A321-200neo(LR).

"This restructuring remains subject to contractual documentation agreement, and more information will be provided as soon as the documentation is finalized," Norwegian said about the Airbus agreement.

According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Norwegian currently has sixty-three A320neo, thirty A321neo(LR), and ninety-two B737-8s on order directly from the manufactures. The carrier also has an outstanding order for five B787-9s, which was not affected by the agreements.

In February, Norwegian deferred deliveries of twelve B737 MAX 8s from 2020 to 2023 and 2024 and four A321neo(LR) from 2019 to 2020. Earlier in April, Arctic Aviation Assets also deferred an unspecified number of A320neo and A321neo(LR).

"On the restructuring on the order book, we feel kind of finalized on that now. We don't expect to do any more reschedulings for - at least for the short term," CFO Geir Karlsen said during the quarterly earnings call.

Arctic Aviation Assets operates predominantly as an in-house lessor to various Norwegian units. The company leases thirty-eight Boeing jets - including B737-800s, MAX 8s, B787-8s, and -9s - to Norwegian, twenty-five to Norwegian Air International (Dublin International), and one each to Norwegian Air Sweden (Stockholm Arlanda) and Norwegian UK (London Gatwick). It also dry-leases three B737-800s to Jeju Air (7C, Jeju) and one such aircraft to Ruili Airlines (DR, Kunming Changshui).

The carrier is currently looking for an investor in the lessor to form a joint-venture. Karlsen said that with the rescheduling of deliveries, Norwegian got itself more time to find a business partner.

"We have actually bought ourselves much more time now. So now we have to evaluate now. Do we want to go into a partnership now? Would it make sense to wait because we think the values are going to come up? We have optionality as I see it, but that said, that - those discussions are definitely not dead. It's still very much alive," Karlsen said.

He also added that while Norwegian will refrain from selling B737-800s as long as B737 MAX are grounded, the current crisis could actually increase the value of the NG aircraft.

"We do have some capacity to sell more of the NGs. The value of the NGs or the attractiveness of the NGs has definitely come up since we have seen the situation with the MAXs as such," Karlsen said.