Q1 results strongly affected by high fuel prices

Soaring oil prices gave Norwegian an additional bill of over MNOK 140 in the first quarter. The high oil prices strongly contributed to the net result after tax of MNOK -293. The company transported 3.1 million passengers, 14 percent more than the same quarter last year and the turnover was NOK 1.9 billion, an increase of 19 percent. Production increased by 28 percent.

- This has been a challenging quarter, primarily due to the high oil price and currency loss. However, on the positive side, we see a good passenger and production growth as well as good pre-sale of tickets, said CEO Bjorn Kjos.

- We have made ??significant investments in new business routes in Sweden and not the least in a large new investment in Finland. This has resulted in extraordinary costs in the order of 100 million in first quarter. With the same fuel – and currency conditions as last year, adjusted for start-up costs of 100 million, we have an improvement of nearly 50 million compared to last year, said Kjos.

More robust with new aircraft

- The replacement of the fleet with more new and more fuel-efficient aircraft will continue to make us much more robust against high fuel prices. Our fuel consumption has decreased by 6 percent per seat since the same time last year, said Kjos.

Seven new Boeing 737-800 aircraft has been put in to operation during the first quarter of 2011, while, at the same time, smaller and older Boeing 737-300 has been phased out. Norwegian has 14 more new 800 aircraft now compared to a year ago. Later this year, another eight new aircraft will be delivered to Norwegian from Boeing. As of today, the company has a total of 57 aircraft in the fleet.