Norwegian Air Shuttle
- Former CFO Geir Karlsen, who always seemed to be the most competent person in the room during Norwegian's quarterly presentations, is now CEO
- Long-haul (transatlantic flights) and the B787's are gone
- Plans to have 250 (European) routes to 100+ destinations by summer 2022
- Was able to hold onto its London Gatwick slots
- $7.5 billion in cash on hand [great for Norwegian]; cash burn improving -- expects to be cash neutral Q3 [really, really great for Norwegian]
- July load factor 74%
- Prepandemic, Norwegian and Jet Blue had announced an intention to enter a partnership to allow connecting flights between the two purchased on a single ticket; I assume that is dead -- no mention of it and no one asked about it during the Q2 presentation
- For airline geeks, the 2021 Q2/First Half Presentation
Norse Atlantic Airways
- Okay, okay... not bankrupt... but this not-yet-flying startup airline was created by the three Bjørns, including Bjørn Kjos, the founder of Norwegian Air Shuttle whose aggressive transatlantic discount carrier plan pushed Norwegian to the verge of insolvency a couple of times per year.
- Norse Atlantic is kind of like the pre-pandemic Norwegian minus the profitable domestic Nordic and intra-Europe operations to keep the airline afloat
- Norse Atlantic has filed an application for a Foreign Air Travel Permit with the US Dept of Transportation; it's fun reading how the new airline sales itself to DOT
- The juicy part of the DOT filing is the initial routes planned for summer 2022: Oslo-Fort Lauderdale, Oslo-New York Stewart International, Oslo-Los Angeles Ontario; so the plan seems to be transatlantic flights to secondary airports, at least to start
WOW Air
- The name and assets of insolvent WOW Air were purchased in 2019 by an investor group whose most prominent investor is Michele Ballarin AKA Michelle Lyn Golden AKA Michele Roosevelt Edwards (you should probably suspect that this is not going to end well on the basis of the number of aliases alone)
- No flights yet but has trade-marked the phrases WOW world™ and Honest Fares™
- The description of
Honest FaresHonest Fares™ on the WOW website seems more like satire than a genuine airline product - Oh yeah, Michele Ballarin apparently faked owning a $30 million mansion for an Iceland interview (the true owner denies knowing Ms Ballarin and wonders how she got into the place to do an interview there) and apparently is an election conspiracy theororist
Play
- Former WOW Air executives who ran that airline into the ground have formed this startup airline, vowing to have learned from the mistake of expanding WOW to quickly
- Play is running flights between Iceland and Europe!
- It has filed an application with DOT to start service between the US and Iceland in summer 2022. It's application is much more boring than that of Nordic Atlantic (i.e. no initial routes in the application and no sucking up to the US government)
- CEO Birgir Jónnson has been quoted as saying initial cities will be "New York, Boston, and Washington, these kind of cities at least." WOW started with Boston and Baltimore
- I have to admit I kind of love the Play livery which can be seen here: https://airwaysmag.com/airlines/play-airlines-moves-closer-to-inaugural-flight/