By Vanni Gibertini
Norwegian Low-Cost Airline Flyr Declares Bankruptcy
After only 19 months of operations, Norwegian low-cost airline Flyr has been forced to suspend all its operations and plans to file for bankruptcy.
“Flyr was unsuccessful with the new financial plan and the board concluded on Tuesday evening that there are no alternatives for further operation. The company will file for bankruptcy on Wednesday morning”, says the airline’s website, specifying that “all flights are now canceled and will not be rescheduled”.
The carrier was founded in 2020 by a group of 30 investors led by Erik Braathens, a former director of Norwegian carrier Braathens SAFE that subsequently merged with Scandinavian Airlines in 2004 after 57 years of operations. The name of the airline is the verb “to fly” in Norwegian, and that represents simplicity, one of the main values of the airline.
The first flight took place on June 30, 2021 from Oslo Gardenmoer to Tromso, in the north of the country. Flyr was planning on focusing on the Norwegian domestic market, at the time served by the incumbent Scandinavian Airlines and struggling low-cost airline Norwegian that was going through financial difficulties exacerbated by all the travel restrictions brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.
They started operating with three Boeing 737-800 aircraft to which they subsequently added some leased Boeing 737 MAX. As of January 2023 the airline had an all-Boeing fleet of 12 aircraft, six 737-800s and six 737-8 MAX, all configured with 189 economy class seats.
After a summer 2022 season during which Flyr’s network expanded to include 35 destinations in 14 European countries, the airline decided to drastically reduce its network during the winter in order to save cash.
In January the Board of Directors announced that an attempt to secure funding for 330 million Norwegian Crowns ($33.27 million) had failed, Reuters reports. Then, on Jan. 31, the decision to cease trading and declare bankruptcy less than two years after their maiden flight.
A Large, But Sparse Country
The ruggedness of its territory and its sheer size and configuration make air transportation essential in Norway. However, in a country with slightly more than 5 million people scattered on a territory almost the size of California and with the distance between its southernmost town (Kristiansand) and its northernmost islands (Svalbard) being roughly the same as the distance between New York and Houston, it is easy to run into overcapacity problems when a new competitor tries to enter the market.
In addition to that, with the world still reeling from the demand shock caused by the pandemic and the lingering restrictions that delayed Flyr’s first flight until the very last day of the second quarter in 2021, cash flow proved insufficient to get through the second winter and eventually proved, once again, that in the airline business cash is king.
Vanni fell in love with commercial aviation during his undergraduate studies in Statistics at the University of Bologna, when he prepared his thesis on the effects of deregulation on the U.S. and European aviation markets. Then he pursued his passion further by obtaining a Master’s Degree in Air Transport Management at Cranfield University in the U.K. followed by holding several management positions at various start-up carriers in Europe (Jet2, SkyEurope, Silverjet). After moving to Canada, he was Business Development Manager for IATA for nine years before turning to his other passion: sports writing.
