Bankruptcy of Denmark’s Cimber Sterling will leave no long-lasting network gaps

Several airlines have moved quickly to fill the void left by the grounding last week of Cimber Sterling, although not one specific carrier will make major inroads. The LCC/regional operator accounted for only about 8% of seat capacity in its Danish home market and the market is highly fragmented. SAS is the largest carrier in Denmark and provided about one third of total seat capacity prior to Cimber Sterling's bankruptcy while Norwegian Air Shuttle is the country's second largest airline, with about a 14% share of capacity (seats), according to data from Innovata.

Copenhagen Kastrup Airport is Norwegian's third largest base in terms of weekly seat capacity after Oslo and Stockholm Arlanda. It was the first airline to take the plunge and open a base at Copenhagen when Sterling went bankrupt in 2008. Cimber Sterling's failure will create opportunities for Norwegian to further build its Copenhagen base with additional Boeing 737s and increased frequencies on routes on which it competed with Cimber Sterling such as Barcelona, Malaga, Nice, Prague and Rome Fiumicino. Even before the grounding of Cimber Sterling, Norwegian had planned to base more aircraft at Copenhagen as of Jun-2012.