Published on : Tuesday, April 23, 2019
The plan of Norwegian Air to increase its schedule for the summer travel season was thrown into disarray last month when international aviation authorities grounded all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, the plane that Norwegian flew between Stewart and Europe.
Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have been forced to withdraw thousands of flights and refurbish their schedules, too, pending Boeing’s resolution of safety issues linked to two fatal crashes of the new-model planes in five months.
Anders Lindstrom, a Norwegian spokesman, said the carrier has leased an Airbus A330-300 with 388 seats – twice the number the Max 8 has to provide the Stewart flights rather than offer a second daily flight to Dublin as originally planned.
The plans to add three-times-a-week flights from Stewart to Shannon, Ireland, are on hold, at least until Norwegian is able to return its Max 8s to service. Already booked Shannon passengers have been given the option of flying to Dublin and using public transportation to Shannon – at Norwegian’s expense.
Similarly, Norwegian Airlines will not resume seasonal flights to Bergen, Norway, at Stewart. The carrier has suggested those would-be passengers consider flying from JFK to Oslo, Norway, or London, England, and picking up flights to Bergen there.
When the Max 8s were grounded in mid-March, Norwegian temporarily suspended ticket sales at Stewart until it was certain it could accommodate all passengers who had already booked flights. Norwegian Airlines also re-routed passengers scheduled to fly between T. F. Green Airport in Providence, R.I., and Ireland to Stewart, busing them to and from Rhode Island. Now, the carrier is using a Boeing 737-800 assigned to its new Hamilton, Ontario-Dublin route at T.F. Green on alternate days.
Norwegian, Stewart’s first and only international carrier, debuted in mid-2017 and subsequently sent the airport’s passenger volume to levels not seen in 10 years. At its peak, the carrier offered 24 flights a week but cut back in December amid financial constraints attributed to its rapid expansion and again now as a result of the Max 8 grounding.
Tags: Boeing, Max 8, norwegian air, Stewart