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Norwegian Air scraps Ireland-US services over 737 Max grounding

Norwegian Air has pulled flights between Ireland and the US due to the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max.

Norwegian said all six routes from Dublin, Cork and Shannon to the US and Canada would cease on September 15.

The airline said it had “concluded these routes are no longer commercially viable”.

The low-cost carrier was forced to establish temporary operations in Ireland in March following the grounding of the 737 Max 8 aircraft after two fatal crashes.

The first was a Lion Air flight which crashed into the sea off Jakarta last year, and the second an Ethiopian Airlines’ flight which crashed shortly after take off from Addis Ababa in March.


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As a result, Norwegian passengers booked from Cork and Shannon had to be bussed to catch flights from Dublin.

Norwegian reported deeper first-quarter losses in April of almost 1.5 billion Norwegian krone (£133.5 million) against NOK 46.2 million a year earlier.

Matthew Wood, senior vice president of Norwegian’s long-haul division, said: “Since March, we have tirelessly sought to minimise the impact on our customers by hiring replacement aircraft to operate services between Ireland and North America. However, as the return to service date for the 737 MAx remains uncertain, this solution is unsustainable.”

Customers who have flights booked will be rerouted onto other Norwegian services or offered a full refund.

The airline said redundancies resulting from the decision to end the Ireland-US routes would be “a last resort”.

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