Europe’s largest aircraft contract ever

The airline company “Norwegian” has had a tremendous growth over the last years. It has taken over market shares from Scandinavia’s traditionally largest airline company SAS and has also grown large in the Finnish market in competition with Finnair.

With Europe’s largest aircraft purchase ever, Norwegian is now aiming for large market shares on air traffic all over Europe. Norwegian has ordered 122 aircrafts of Boeing’s new 737 MAX8 planes, which will be launched with Norwegians purchase. In addition, Norwegian has signed an agreement with Airbus for the purchase of 100 Airbus A320neo and options for 50 aircraft of the same type. The purchase has a total price of € 16 billion and will be the largest single investment in Norway ever, outside the oil industry.

“This is a historic day for Norwegian. The order is the largest any European airline have signed and a major milestone in the company’s 10-year history. We have secured our fleet renewal for many years ahead in time and are very pleased with the agreements and the conditions we have received from both Airbus and Boeing,” says Norwegian’s CEO Bjørn Kjos.

Norwegian ordered 42 new Boeing 737-800 aircrafts in 2007. Back then there were many who believed that the investment was too big for the, at that time, rather small airline company. Norwegian proved all skeptics wrong and now they have done an even larger investment.

“We have extended the 2007 order several times, so our need for aircrafts has been far greater than we anticipated back then. I understand that many will argue that our new order is too large. No matter what, we are happy to put Norway on the international aviation map and highlight that also Norwegian and Scandinavian companies can compete with other European airlines,” says Kjos.