The Norwegian Air Group, comprising Norwegian and Widerøe airlines, experienced a surge in passenger numbers in January 2025.
The year’s opening continued a trend of solid capacity growth for the airline group, which continued across 2024.
The group transported a total of 1,567,875 passengers, a 13% increase compared to January 2024. Norwegian itself saw a 12% rise in passenger volume, carrying 1,273,809 passengers. Meanwhile subsidiary carrier Widerøe’s numbers jumped by an impressive 19% to 294,066 passengers.
Trend Follows Year of Capacity Growth
This positive trend follows a year of significant capacity growth, particularly during the winter months. Looking ahead to 2025, the airline group is shifting its focus towards cost-saving measures and optimizing capacity utilization.
“It is encouraging to see our passenger numbers continue to increase into the new year,” commented Geir Karlsen, CEO of Norwegian. “We have added significantly to our capacity and this has, as we expected, impacted our load factor.”
“While 2024 was marked with solid capacity growth, particularly in recent winter months, we will dedicate 2025 to cost initiatives and improved utilisation of capacity.”
Karlsen also highlighted the group’s dominant position in the Norwegian market. “It is good to see that we are strengthening our position as the leading airline group in Norway.”
“Combined, Norwegian and Widerøe grew by over 1.7 million passengers according to Avinor’s numbers for 2024. This represents more than 70 percent of net growth in air travel in Norway, resulting in an overall market share of 50 percent.”
January Group Performance
Norwegian: Capacity Up, Punctuality Affected by Weather
Norwegian’s capacity, measured in available seat kilometers (ASK), reached 2,247 million in January, a substantial 23% increase year-over-year.
Passenger traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), also saw a 22% rise to 1,844 million. However, the load factor, which indicates how full the planes were, dipped slightly by one percentage point to 82.1%.
Punctuality, a key performance indicator, was impacted by adverse weather conditions early in January. The airline reported that only 71.3% of flights departed within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, a 2.6 percentage point decrease from the previous year.
However, punctuality improved significantly in the latter half of the month, reaching 85.5%. Regularity, the percentage of scheduled flights that actually took place, remained high at 98.6%, though slightly down by 0.2 percentage points.
Norwegian operated an average of 72 aircraft throughout January.
Widerøe’s Strong Start to the Year
Widerøe also demonstrated strong performance in January. Their capacity (ASK) reached 158 million seat kilometers, a 4% increase from last year.
Passenger traffic (RPK) reached 108 million seat kilometers, and the load factor rose significantly by 6.1 percentage points to 68.4%.
Looking Ahead: Summer Program and New Routes
Norwegian is gearing up for a busy summer season, having received two new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in January. These aircraft will be deployed across the airline’s extensive summer program, which features 344 routes to over 120 destinations.
“I am very encouraged to see that Boeing seems to be successfully ramping up their production resulting in two brand new MAX 8 aircraft deliveries to our Copenhagen base in January,” said Karlsen.
The airline is already seeing strong demand for Easter holiday travel and advises passengers to book early. Norwegian has also expanded its summer offerings with 17 new routes, including Tangier from Copenhagen, Toulouse from Oslo, Bilbao from Stockholm, and Malta from Helsinki.
“We are experiencing high demand for the Easter holidays, and we advise those planning to travel during this period to book early. Our preparations for the busy summer have begun, and we see that customers are eager to book early,” Karlsen added.
Furthermore, Norwegian has recently released its winter 2025/2026 program for sale, which will commence at the end of October 2025. This allows passengers to plan their winter travel well in advance.
Click the banner to subscribe to our weekly newsleter.
Click the photo to join our WhatsApp channel so then you can stay up to date with everything going on in the aviation industry!
