Norwegian Air’s Dublin routes to US carry 250,000

SCANDINAVIAN carrier Norwegian has carried 250,000 passengers on its transatlantic services out of Dublin in the 14 months since launching the routes to the United States.

It revealed the landmark figure after coming under fire this week from Belfast International Airport upon cancelling its services from Northern Ireland to the US. Norwegian, whose chief executive is Bjorn Kjos, has been beefing up services from Dublin and Shannon, while reducing operations out of Cork.

It’s planning to increase capacity on its Dublin-Providence (Rhode Island) service by 40% next summer. It will offer a year-round daily service on the route. It’s also launching a route between Dublin and Toronto’s Hamilton Airport, and has doubled the frequency on its service to New York’s Stewart International from the capital. Next summer it will operate a total of 28 flights a week between Dublin and North America.

At Shannon, Norwegian will operate five times a week to Stewart International next summer, and three times a week during the coming winter. It will operate four times a week from Shannon to Providence.

At Cork poor load factors prompted Norwegian to suspend its service from the city to Providence from next month. It will operate the route again next summer. It’s battling Aer Lingus, owned by IAG, and other carriers for business. Norwegian said it was cancelling its services from Belfast to Stewart International and Providence due to a lack of demand.

Belfast International Airport said it was “extremely disappointed” by Norwegian’s decision to leave the Northern Ireland market. It said Norwegian’s schedule of two flights per week from Belfast was “neither flexible nor attractive enough to appeal to the local travelling public”. It added: “Regrettably the limited and inferior product offered by Norwegian was creating awareness within the market, but... channelling much greater levels of Northern Ireland passengers onto Dublin flights.”

Norwegian has been battling to profitably translate its lowcost model to the long-haul market.