April traffic figures: Norwegian strongly affected by closed European airspace in April

Norwegian’s passenger figures were strongly affected by the unexpected closing of European airspace in April due to volcanic ash. Close to 2 000 flights were cancelled.  A total of 800 000 passengers flew with Norwegian. The company had a production growth of 13 percent compared to April last year.

“April has been a challenging month for Norwegian because of the authorities’ closing of European airspace, but we are satisfied with the April figures taking the severe disruption into consideration.

Our passengers have suffered, and Norwegian have lost at least NOK 100 million. We have done everything in our power to safely transport our stranded passengers home, and we commenced flight operations as soon as we were given clearance by the authorities. We are pleased that traffic is now back to normal, and we are very satisfied with a 91 percent on-time performance, particularly given the major disruptions we have been subjected to,” said Bjørn Kjos, Chief Executive Officer of Norwegian.

The yield is estimated at 0.51 NOK for April, down 19 percent compared to the same month in 2009. The development partially reflects a significantly adjusted route portfolio and the introduction of five new Boeing 737-800 aircraft with higher capacity and lower unit cost. The yield is also negatively affected by the closing of European airspace.

The airline’s load factor was 71 percent, 8 percent lower than April 2009. The reduction is partially caused by slow recovery of passenger traffic during the first week of resumed operations.

Norwegian operated 79.9 percent of its scheduled flights in April, of which 91.1 percent departed on time. The underlying regularity adjusted for the disruptions due to the closure of European airspace was 96.6 percent.

Please find more financial figures in the attached PDF.

Contacts:

SVP, Corporate Communications, Anne-Sissel Skånvik, phone +47 48 99 44 40

CFO, Frode Foss, phone +47 91 63 16 45.