Chaos and job cuts feared as air routes to US axed

THOUSANDS of passengers face travel chaos and up to 134 jobs are at risk as Norwegian Air revealed it is to end all transatlantic routes between Ireland and North America next month.

The airline began operating routes between Dublin, Cork, Shannon and the US, amid much fanfare, in July 2017, carrying 650,000 passengers in that time.

However, now it says the routes are not ‘commercially viable’ and has admitted that ‘several thousand customers’ will be affected when it closes its Dublin base and cuts its transatlantic routes to New York, Boston and Toronto, from September 15.

While Norwegian’s 80 Irish-based administrative staff will not be affected, up to 134 pilots and cabin crew face an uncertain future, although it said redundancies would be a last resort.

Matthew Wood, senior vice president of the airline’s long-haul division, said: ‘As the airline moves from growth to profitability, we have conducted a comprehensive review of our transatlantic operations between Ireland and North America and, considering the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, we have concluded that these routes are no longer commercially viable.’

He added: ‘We are assisting customers by ensuring they can still get to their destination by rerouting them onto other Norwegian services. Customers will also be offered a full refund if they no longer wish to travel. We will continue to offer scheduled services from Dublin to Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen as normal.’

All variants of the Boeing 737 Max were grounded in March in the wake of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight killing all 157 passengers on board, including an Irish man, Micheál Ryan.

The move particularly affected Norwegian, which had to deploy Boeing 787 Dreamliners to cover its Irish routes.

Norwegian said the grounding of the 737 Max family of aircraft was not the sole factor in its decision, although the uncertainty surrounding the return to service of the Max family led the company ‘to make the difficult decision’.

A campaign had been waged by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) and Government agencies to secure the Norwegian services between Ireland and the United States. And the airline’s decision to use an Ireland-based subsidiary to launch the low-cost transatlantic services caused a political storm in the US. Airline unions there were also opposed to it.

Norwegian took delivery of its first Max jet from Boeing in June 2017 and deployed it on routes from Dublin to Stewart International Airport in Upstate New York, and to Providence, which served Boston.

It suspended its Cork to Providence, Rhode Island, service last year due to low customer numbers and the service never returned.

Editor of Travel Extra, Eoghan Corry, told the Irish Daily Mail the news has not shocked the travel industry. ‘They came with a big fanfare but are leaving with their tail between their legs. It’s no big surprise,’ he said.

‘The margins were extremely tight for the model they were working with and they needed a few breaks. They needed people to buy in a greater volume.

‘Ultimately, cheaper tickets for the consumer but bad for the business model. The market they were working in really didn’t exist until now,’ he added.

Norwegian Air was founded in 1993 as a small domestic airline, but changed strategy in 2002 to become a budget carrier.

Its low fares have helped it grow rapidly, and it is now Europe’s third biggest low-cost carrier.

‘The margins were extremely tight’