Norwegian has cut its forecast capacity growth as it recalibrates its plans to absorb the impact of worsening Boeing delivery delays.
Speaking during a third-quarter earnings briefing on 25 October, Norwegian chief executive Geir Karlsen said next year will see two years of “decent growth” at the Scandinavian low-cost carrier come to an end, with only three or four Boeing 737 Max deliveries planned.
He expects the delivery delays to continue into 2026, creating a prolonged period of capped capacity across the industry.
“Before the strike happened, Boeing was 11-13 months late on deliveries, now we can add at least three months, depending on when this strike is coming to an end,” Karlsen states.
“And they are telling us that when they come out of the strike it will take them two to three months to come back to the level they were.”
The latest intelligence from Boeing, he says, is that negotiations with unions might have “a few more weeks” to run. And he highlights the potential for furloughs at subcontractors to affect Boeing competitor Airbus, exacerbating industry-wide delivery delays.
“The longer this situation occurs the longer it will take to get back,” he states.
Norwegian is planning “conservatively” in terms of next year’s capacity, Karlsen says, and is expecting to operate around 90 aircraft in summer 2025 and 97 in summer 2026. As recently as April this year it was forecasting a fleet size of 101 at the end of 2025.
In response, Norwegian has paused plans to expand outside the Nordic region in 2025.
“We have enough capacity to take care of our Nordic production,” he states. “We are not planning to do the planned extensions outside the Nordics in 2025.”
The carrier offset some of those delivery delays with wet-lease capacity during the recent summer season, but it is not planning to do the same in 2025, Karlsen notes, partly because of the cost impact. It will instead sell a programme based only on receiving that handful of new 737 Max jets.
Amid what Karlsen characterises as a high-cost environment for the business following wage inflation and the impact of taking on more leased aircraft, Norwegian’s group operating profit fell 2% year on year to NKr2.13 billion ($195 million) in the third quarter, on a 32% rise in revenues to NKr11.6 billion (a rise that partly reflects regional carrier Wideroe joining the group in the interim).
The group’s net profit was also down 2% at NKr2 billion.
