OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian Air reported a 68% year-on-year rise in third-quarter revenue on Thursday as travel in Europe gradually recovers from the pandemic.
The budget carrier’s sales for the July-September period amounted to 1.52 billion Norwegian crowns ($180 million), up from 905 million crowns a year ago when travel remained severely restricted by COVID-19 lockdowns.
The pandemic sent the indebted airline into bankruptcy proceedings https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/norwegian-air-saved-collapse-reinvents-regional-carrier-2021-05-26 last year, forcing it to terminate its transatlantic network before emerging in a slimmed-down version in May of 2021.
“We are now in a strong financial position going into the traditionally more challenging winter months,” Chief Executive Geir Karlsen said in a statement.
“We have seen a positive trend in forward bookings month on month and an increasing number of passengers are choosing to fly Norwegian across our European network,” he added.
Bookings have risen in response to vaccination and the relaxation of travel restrictions, and the company said it expects its available seat kilometres (ASK), a key capacity metric, to rise to 29 billion in 2022 from 18.2 billion in 2020.
Year-to-date for 2021, the ASK stood at just 4.8 billion kilometres.
($1 = 8.4391 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Terje Solsvik)
