The stock of Norwegian Air Shuttle (OTCMKTS:NWARF) closed at $21.10 losing 0.47% in yesterday’s trading session. It was on Wednesday when the Norwegian Air Shuttle disclosed that it had succeeded at purchasing extra slots at London’s Gatwick Airport.
This was in a bid to make major expansions in most of its UK operations, and the best part was that it managed to up its capacity at the airport where it has over years posed fierce competition to the British Airways owner IAG. Norwegian Air proceeded to outline that it had purchased 28 additional weekly landing and take-off slots at Gatwick.
The company earlier on unveiled a new connecting service with easyJet at the airport and it has been projected that much more growth will be witnessed within a short period of time.
The Chief Commercial Officer at Norwegian, Thomas Ramdahl opined, “London Gatwick is at the heart of our global growth ambitions so securing these crucial new slots will allow us to offer our passengers even more new routes, additional flights and affordable fares. Norwegian and Iceland’s Wow Air have begun offering cut-price fares to U.S. destinations from Europe, putting the squeeze on traditional long-haul carriers.”
Norwegian’s deal with easyJet early this year entailed the drawing up of mechanisms that would make it possible to connect British carrier’s passengers. It was all about enabling them to connect much more easily with the long-haul flights at Gatwick and that meant exerting more pressure on IAG.
For a number of years fierce competition continues to be witnessed between IAG and the Norwegian on transatlantic routes from the airport. In the previous month, IAG succeeded in boosting its presence at Gatwick thus putting to its side numerous slots from Monarch. That was after the incident that happened in October that saw the airline collapse suddenly.
Several analysts have moved forward to speak in relation to the matter. They outlined that IAG’s newly acquired Gatwick slots would play quite a significant role towards facilitating expansions in the low-cost long-haul airline level that was unveiled this year. It might end up posing strong competition in the growing budget transatlantic market.