Should Norwegian Air Shuttle fail to get fresh capital into the company, the carrier is threatened with extinction. According to the carrier, this could already be the case in the first quarter of 2021. The Norwegian government refuses to grant any further state aid and points out that the low-cost airline was already heavily indebted before the corona pandemic and was deep in the red.

Norwegian has to take a different route to raise money, which is no easy feat given the overall circumstances. In the third quarter of 2020, the net loss was around 92 million euros. Liquid funds are decreasing day by day and have halved since around July 2020.

Since the Norwegian government received a basket of five billion kroner for the state aid application, company boss Jacob Schram acted immediately: The active fleet will be reduced to six machines and will mainly be used within Norway. Another 1.600 employees will also lose their jobs. But in Germany in particular, Wizzair is a financially strong competitor. He plans to attack the battered Norwegian head-on.

It is currently hoped that the carrier can be retained in a greatly reduced form. Michael O'Leary, CEO of the Ryanair Group, looked into his famous "crystal ball" last week and claims that Norwegian will only survive "if at all" as a small regional airline.