Norwegian Air CEO Shares His Outlook for Summer 2024

13.04.2024 - 22:01 / skift.com / Gordon Smith / Airlines

In the modern airline business, companies are usually divided by their “low-cost” or “legacy” models. The upstarts versus the old guard.

But is there room for a little Scandinavian pragmatism in the mix? Norwegian Air Shuttle seems to think so. “We’ve never tried to be a superior airline for the few, or a cheap airline for the many,” touts its marketing materials.

Whatever Norwegian is doing seems to be working. The airline emerged from the pandemic with a stripped-back route network and restructured finances.

Long gone are its long-haul flights, which once stretched as far afield as Argentina and Brazil. These days it’s more about Copenhagen than Copacabana. 

Even in its slimmed-down form, Norwegian has bounced back to become Scandinavia’s second-largest airline (behind only SAS) and the dominant player in its native Norway. It boasts a robust network criss-crossing the Nordics, complemented by links to major business capitals and leisure-oriented routes to southern Europe.

Illustrating the scale of Norwegian’s gravity-defying turnaround, last year it snapped up Widerøe – the country’s largest regional carrier – as part of a $105 million deal.

In the latest of our Leaders of Travel: Skift C-Suite Series, we sit down with Norwegian CEO Geir Karlsen. He’s led the Oslo-based carrier since June 2021 and previously held the role of CFO at the airline.

We hear his predictions for the all-important summer season and find out how Norwegian is differentiating itself from big-name rivals.

Skift: Summer is traditionally Norwegian’s most important season. How is it shaping up this year?

Geir Karlsen: This summer is looking good. We’re selling tickets now for a 10-15% higher yield than we were at the same time last year and load factors [the number of seats sold on a flight] are also on par. It seems like the booking curve has normalized a little. People are booking a bit earlier so we’re getting greater visibility. 

How concerned are you about the current demand levels softening? 

It’s a good question, but a difficult one. As of today, we don’t see a softening based on the visibility that we have. For us, the focus is executing our plan. We are more concerned about the potential for delays in the delivery of the Boeing 737s. We had delays last year, we have them this year and we will have delays next year as well. Other than that, the market is pretty hot. 

Do you have the ability to hold onto your older Boeing planes for longer to mitigate any delivery delays?

Yes, we do. That’s what we did last year and we’ll extend a few more this year as well.  

How do you differentiate Norwegian from direct and indirect competitors? 

Our main competitor by far is SAS [Scandinavian Airlines]. They have their