LONDON – Norse Atlantic Airways has announced the appointment of Charles Duncan to the role of President of the airline.
Welcome, Norse’s New President…
In a press release issued on 09 February 2023, Norse Atlantic stated the newly created role would “focus on core areas of the business including Commercial, Operations, Network, and People.”
Norse CEO, Bjorn Tore Larsen, has commented, “I am very pleased to welcome Charles Duncan to Norse Atlantic Airways. His extensive industry experience will further strengthen the senior leadership of the company as we continue to ramp up our summer 2023 schedule and look ahead to winter 2023 and beyond.”
“I look forward to working closely with Charles as we continue to focus on profitability by year-end by continuing to build a robust network and organizational structure.”
The new appointee, Charles Duncan, has previously held various senior executive roles in North America – namely Westjet, United Airlines, and Continental Airlines.
With a varied resume in ‘legacy’ and low-cost carriers and long and short-haul operations, Duncan brings a varied 25 years of experience to the role and company. With his experience in North America, the target destination market for Norse, this may also bring other benefits to the company.
In the press release, Duncan said on his appointment to Norse, “…I am very pleased to be joining at this important stage in the company’s growth. The journey to reach the full potential of Norse Atlantic’s business model is well underway and I look forward to being part of this dynamic and agile company.”
The Low-Cost Long-Haul Goal…
The appointment of Duncan, many reports, comes at a time when Norse is firming its position, and ambitions, to become a successful low-cost long-haul airline. An accolade targeted by many since the early days of Laker. Duncan said, “Norse Atlantic Airways is on track to become the first successful low-cost long haul airline…”
In January, Norse reported a strong end-of-year performance for December 2022 and 2022 as a whole. This included a reported aggregate load factor of 61% and included a reported diversification of aircraft utilization in the Winter, often the low period in European low-cost carriers.
The company also reported, in the same press release issued on 11 January 2023, that they had “reached several record milestones in both ticket sales and revenue recorded in a single day” and that they saw favorably received festive promotions for consumers in their key markets, primarily in the US.
In early 2023, the Oslo-based airline reported having surpassed carrying 300,000 passengers (just over 44,000 in December alone) since the start of operations in June 2022 – when it took over most of the market left behind by the withdrawal of Norwegian Air Shuttle, and subsidiaries, from the long-haul market in 2021.
The carrier’s December 2022 performance showed it had operated a 53% on-time program (where flights arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time) and delays were primarily due to weather at New York JFK.
CEO Larsen said of the end-of-year performance, “We have continued to deliver on our business plan to reduce costs and diversify the utilization of our fleet during the winter.
“I am particularly pleased that we have successfully completed nine wet-lease and charter operations during December, as a new entrant in this market we have clearly displayed that Norse has both the technical ability, high standard of the crew, and flexibility required to satisfy our customers in this segment.”
“The company has begun 2023 with strong forward bookings across our key markets. We will be announcing further summer routes from London to the US soon and I am delighted to confirm that we will imminently launch a new destination from the EU to the US as well.”
