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In the modern airline business, companies are usually divided by their "low-cost" or "legacy" models. The upstarts versus the old guard.
But is there room for a little Scandinavian pragmatism in the mix? Norwegian Air Shuttle seems to think so. “We’ve never tried to be a superior airline for the few, or a cheap airline for the many,” touts its marketing materials.
Whatever Norwegian is doing seems to be working. The airline emerged from the pandemic with a stripped-back route network and restructured finances.
Long gone are its long-haul flights, which once stretched as far afield as Argentina and Brazil. These days it’s more about Copenhagen than Copacabana.
Even in its slimmed-down form, Norwegian has bounced back to become Scandinavia’s second-largest airline (behind only SAS) and the dominant player in its native Norway. It boasts a robust network criss-crossing the Nordics, complemented by links to major business capitals and leisure-oriented routes to southern Europe.
Illustrating the scale of Norwegian's gravity-defying turnaround, last