Tag Archives for norwegian.
Synchrony bank has introduced The Norwegian Reward Card, a co-brand Norwegian Air Mastercard for the U.S. market. This creates a new income stream for the struggling airline that has seemed to turn a corner lately.
The Austin airport teased a new route announcement coming this morning. Routes Online broke the news ahead of their announcement – and it’s one I didn’t expect.
Norwegian is cheap flying, but when things go wrong it isn’t known for great customer service. Mistakes happen, but the test of an airline is how they respond when they do.
When they delivered an 82 year old woman in a wheelchair to the wrong gate she missed her flight. And they told her she’d have to buy a new ticket as a no show passenger.
A Norwegian Boeing 787-8 took off from Rome Fiumicino enroute to Los Angeles as flight DY7115 on Saturday. As it climbed from runway 16R, one of its Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines suffered an uncontained failure. Pieces of the engine — described as “glowing pieces of metal” rained down on the town below “in the hundreds.”
The pilot stopped climbing at 3000 feet and returned to the same runway 23 minutes after takeoff with all 310 passengers and crew on board safe. However 12 homes and 25 vehicles were reportedly damaged by falling parts. One person was actually hit, but wasn’t injured.
American Airlines is running all of its Europe and deep South America flights from New York JFK with Boeing 777s. That’s too much capacity even for a joint venture partner’s hub like Madrid (Iberia). They really ought to be basing some smaller aircraft, like Boeing 787s, out of New York and serving more destinations profitably.
During peak summer months and during fall and winter holidays there’s often fare compression, business class tickets go down in price (especially for restricted fares that leisure flyers can buy) while coach gets more expensive. We’re certainly seeing that on American’s New York JFK – Madrid route, where they’re discounting business class. For about the same money you can also fly their partner Iberia’s business class non-stop as well.
At the end of the Obama administration significant sanctions on Iran were lifted. We started to see a flurry of economic activity including a deal to buy 80 Boeing aircraft. There was even talk of Iran Air breathing life into the Airbus A380 program. Those hopes were dashed with the re-introduction of sanctions by the current administration.
Yet Iran commercial aviation managed to keep to the skies, in part because of ‘smuggling’ of aircraft parts into the country.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Several days ago there were questions about Norwegian Air’s ability to survive into the New Year. A report from a Danish bank suggested they could breach financing covenants which could have led to the unraveling of the low cost carrier that has been driving down transatlantic airfares and that is active in Europe.
The carrier though has announced several moves that they say should shore up their balance sheet. Whether these are enough depends on a variety of factors such as the cost of fuel and demand during the winter dip in travel.
A report from Denmark’s Danske Bank says that Norwegian Air, the largest of the transatlantic discounters, could breach conditions of its debt if it doesn’t raise fresh capital by the end of the year.
Low cost transatlantic competitors Wow Air is teetering, and Primera has gone out of business. Norwegian operates both long haul and within Europe and is struggling through the most challenging time of year for a carrier in this hemisphere. How that will change the airline going forward remains to be seen.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
