Norse Atlantic Airways, CEO, Bjørn Tore Larsen at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Airlines in Transition 2025

Transcript

Bjørn Tore Larsen:Well, that was basically that there were modern, brand new aircraft available in the market for a price that no one had ever imagined. And we realized if there ever is a time to start an airline, it's probably now. So it was driven out of opportunity, acquisition opportunity. And then we later on figured out what to do with the assets. I thought they had a great product, value for money, very popular among the customers, and nobody left that void when they went bankrupt, so I— or went under reconstruction. So we really wanted to create something that we knew the customers would love and like and crave for. And of course, despite that you see an opportunity, To actually make it happen and execute it is 2 different things. So over the course of the 2, 3 years we have existed, we had to change the model somewhat. But now we see it's working and it's ticking very well. Understanding the commercial model, if you want. And that both implies the network, it implies how we sell tickets, the use of technology, and to some extent where we are basing the aircraft and the crew. These things I think we were not understanding well enough, and it took us a while to disrupt ourselves. Yeah, I would say, you know, we are, in a good way, fixed the revenue side. Of course, the market dictates ultimately what the fares are going to be, but we are able to fill our aircraft almost to the brim. And at the same time, we are reshaping our cost structure. That is the second, that is sort of sorted for this year, and that is the second big move that we are doing. But we are seeing results both from the revenue side and from the cost side. And we still believe that 2025 will be a profitable year. It's about a third, two-thirds. So about two-thirds own network, one-third charter out. But this is not— we're not religious to that. We are grasping opportunity. We don't think that we could grow and scale up as a charter operator in the long run. But of course, we can be a player in the space. But the core focus will always be to develop our own network and gradually expand the markets we are flying to and from. So the one thing, for example, that we are not— we are, despite I'm from Norway and our headquarters is in Norway, we don't fly to and from Norway, very, very little. We are more an American airline flying Americans to Europe in the summer, and then we are a European airline flying Europeans to Asia and South America— correction, South Africa. and Florida in the winter. We are in Athens now. It's a great market for us to be in. We started here last year flying New York-Athens. This year we're going to expand flying— starting early June, we're going to fly direct flights from Los Angeles to Athens. It's the first time in history, and it's— I think it's a great product for the Los Angeles population that want to go to Athens, but also for the Greeks who want to go to West Coast. See you later.

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