Airlines Norwegian ends transatlantic flights between Ireland and North America

Low-Cost carrier Norwegian has announced, that it will end its transatlantic flights between Ireland and North America.

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The decision was made by Norwegian, after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet was grounded earlier this year. Starting September 15, 2019, the low-cost carrier will not serve the routes from Dublin, Cork and Shannon to Hamilton, Newburgh and Providence.

In total, Norwegian had deployed more than 130 employees at the three Irish bases. After the 737 MAX aircraft have been grounded, the airline used other internal equipment, as well as charter airlines to serve the routes. This has now become too inefficient.

Matthew Wood, SVP Long-Haul Commercial at Norwegian confirmed: “We take a strict approach to route management and constantly evaluate route performance to ensure we meet customer demand. Compounded by the global grounding of the 737 MAX and the continued uncertainty of its return to service, this has led us to make the difficult decision to discontinue all six routes from Dublin, Cork and Shannon to the US and Canada from 15 September 2019.”

Wood added, that Norwegian Long Haul has been trying to minimise the impact on the carrier´s customers since March. Now, after the return date for the re-certification of the MAX aircraft has become uncertain, this solution to cut the routes would be the better option.

“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,” Wood concluded.

Back in 2014, Norwegian introduced its first low-cost long-haul flight to the U.S. Now, the carrier serves 12 destinations in the United States and other cities like Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro from London-Gatwick.

Currently, the fleet of subsidiary airline Norwegian Air International Limited consists of 67 Boeing 737s, including nine MAX 8. Main carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle, which was initially grounded in January 1993, operates with six 737 MAX 8.

After the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in Indonesia and Ethiopia, all aviation authorities across the world had decided to ground the global fleet of the type due to security reasons. Boeing is currently working on a new software version of the MCAS system. After new problems with the autopilot emerged, the re-certification date was furthermore postponed.

Source © media.uk.norwegian.com

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