OSLO, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Budget airline Norwegian Air 6
will continue to slash costs as it builds economies of scale in
its long-haul operation, Chief Executive Bjoern Kjos told an
investor conference on Thursday.
He made the following comments:
ON COSTS
"We aim to further reduce our costs, that is at the top of
our list. Long-haul will reduce the cost.... We will have the
ability to cut costs by up to 15 percent, or maybe more ... but
then we need scale.
"It's on long-haul we could reduce costs further. We only
have eight (Boeing (NYSE:BA)) Dreamliners today. We'll have a total of 19
at the end of 2018 and we could easily fly up to 40-50
Dreamliners. I could easily put 40-50 Dreamliners into the
market we see today.
"When we launch (Boeing 737) MAX8 planes in 2017 you will
see them flying across the Atlantic.
"We will utilise our own feeder network, use our own network
of 430-440 routes, and probably 450 at that time."
ON POTENTIAL PARTNERS TO FEED NORWEGIAN'S LONG-HAUL NETWORK
"I will much rather work with Ryanair RYA.I , that has 1,500
routes, than with an airline that has 100 routes. So if I should
select a partner, I would obviously go for the network and
airline with large network that I can utilise as a feeder
operator for our long-haul operation. That is the simple
strategy for Norwegian going forward."