Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) is cancelling all of its long-haul routes from Copenhagen Kastrup and Stockholm Arlanda, as part of the low-cost carrier's (LCC) strategy of moving from growth to profitability.
The airline's routes to the United States (US) from Copenhagen will not return after their winter break. In the Summer 2019 season, the LCC flew from the Danish capital city to five US destinations - namely New York JFK (4x weekly), Orlando International (weekly), Fort Lauderdale International (2x weekly), Oakland International (2x weekly) and Los Angeles International (3x weekly). Norwegian's 2x weekly service to both Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Krabi in Thailand will be maintained until March 27, 2020, before being cancelled.
As a consequence, due to the changes in the route network, there will no longer be maintenance of the carrier's B787-8s and B787-9s in Copenhagen. It will affect 23 employees in the technical organisation in Copenhagen, which has a total of about 80 staff.
From Stockholm, all of the carrier's US and Thailand flights will be suspended from March 29, 2020. It presently operates 4x weekly to Suvarnabhumi and 2x weekly to Krabi, in addition, it flies 2x weekly to Fort Lauderdale during the winter season.
Norwegian's US flights from Oslo Gardermoen will continue to operate as before. In its statement, the carrier indicates that "it is experiencing high demand for routes from major European cities such as London, Barcelona El Prat and Paris to destinations in the US" and as such it will be "increasing the frequency of several of these routes." It adds that "new routes between Europe and the US have also been launched lately to meet the growing demand."
“We constantly evaluate our route network to ensure that we meet demand. We are experiencing increasing demand on our routes between the US and Europe and look forward to offering travellers on both sides of the Atlantic more choices and good prices," Senior Vice President Commercial Matthew Wood said.
"At the same time, we see that the long-distance market to and from Scandinavia is small, compared to large cities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome. Scandinavia is not large enough to maintain intercontinental flights from Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen. For a long time, we have had challenges with the Rolls-Royce engines on our long-haul aircraft, which means we have more aircraft on the ground. This affects the route programme.”
With eight daily flights to and from Oslo Gardermoen, and five to and from London, the carrier suggests that its "Danish passengers continue to have easy access to the company's intercontinental destinations in the US, Thailand, Argentina and Brazil."
The airline also stressed in its statement that its short- and medium-haul routes from Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo were not affected by this network reshuffle. It is also pointed out that it had recently launched 16 new routes from Scandinavia, seven of which are from Denmark.
