Norwegian Air Shuttle was only able to get rid of a large order placed with Airbus last year. Insolvency proceedings in Ireland played an important role in this. Now one throws another eye on aircraft of the European manufacturer.

With Airbus, Norwegian could easily count on one cancel the previous order, because the aircraft manufacturer was largely able to retain the advance payments already made. With Boeing, on the other hand, a legal dispute was initiated, because this manufacturer insists on US law and is not at all willing to take the existing Max order off the books almost free of charge.

However, Norwegian needs new aircraft in the medium term. The atmosphere between the former "dream partners" is downright poisoned, however, because the airline is suing both in the USA and in the UK for around one billion US dollars in damages. The background to this is the "teething troubles" and delivery delays that were experienced when the Boeing 787 type aircraft began to be used. In the meantime, all long-haul aircraft have been phased out and Boeing 737s are currently used almost exclusively within Europe.

The prerequisites for replacing the existing 800 models with Max are therefore extremely poor. This is known only too well at Norwegian, because the head of the company confirmed this to the Reuters agency. Therefore, they met with Airbus and are already negotiating a possible order from the Europeans.

The cards that could be ordered from Airbus are therefore quite good. They parted on good terms last year, as the deal that led to the cancellation of the 88 A320neo is said to have been quite good for the manufacturer. Norwegian has largely fallen over down payments already made. Thus, the basic climate of discussion is much better than with Boeing. Man flirted with the Boeing 737-Max, but it was probably only a short “love”.

Order problematic for Norwegian due to legal dispute

"We see it as, shall we say, problematic to make a future fleet plan with Boeing while we are in the middle of a legal battle with them," Norwegian CEO Karlsen told Reuters. "So we have to decide what we're going to do in the future and if it's even possible to get a commercial deal with Boeing." That's what we want, but so far we haven't been able to."

In the long term, Norwegian intends to use a mix of owned and leased aircraft. Karlsen also believes that long delivery times mean that you have to act quickly when it comes to fleet renewal. In his eyes, a complete fleet changeover to Airbus aircraft is currently a realistic and probable scenario.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Norwegian Air Shuttle was back in the black. A pre-tax profit of 117 Norwegian kroner was recorded. There were 3,1 million passengers on board. The occupancy rate was estimated at 77 percent. As of December 31, 2022, the group-wide fleet had grown to 51 Boeing 737-800.