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13th Aug 2019

Norwegian to discontinue all transatlantic routes between Ireland and North America

Rudi Kinsella

Norwegian air ireland

The news was announced by the airline on Tuesday afternoon.

Popular airline Norwegian have announced plans to discontinue all transatlantic routes between Ireland and North America.

The routes will be discontinued from September 15 of this year.

Norwegian is among a number of airlines globally that have been impacted by the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX fleet, following two fatal crashes that involved the aircraft.

The airline have said “several thousand customers” will be impacted by the route closures.

Norwegian launched the transatlantic flights from a number of Irish airports in 2017, and they thanked the airports in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The company said that they “take a strict approach to route management and constantly evaluate route performance to ensure we meet customer demand.”

Matthew Wood, SVP Long-Haul Commercial at Norwegian spoke about the news, saying:

“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.

“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.

“Since March, we have tirelessly sought to minimise the impact on our customers by hiring (wetleasing) replacement aircraft to operate services between Ireland and North America. However, as the return to service date for the 737 MAX remains uncertain, this solution is unsustainable.

“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.

“We are proactively engaging with our pilots and cabin crew at our Dublin base, including their respective unions, to ensure that redundancies remain a last resort.

“Our 80 Dublin-based administrative staff at Norwegian Air International and Norwegian Group’s asset company, Arctic Aviation Assets, will not be affected by the route closures.

“We would like to thank Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports in addition to New York Stewart, Providence and Hamilton airports, tourism partners and our colleagues and customers for supporting Norwegian’s transatlantic expansion from Ireland since 2017.”

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