The airline pledged to maintain services from the UK, Spain and Finland together with long haul routes to the US and Thailand.

“Ever since the weekend, Norwegian’s management has been trying to get a solution with Norwegian Pilot Union and the union Parat to prevent that even more passengers are affected, without success,” the airline said.  “It has unfortunately not been possible to achieve a dialogue.

The dispute centres on planned “essential” cost-cuts by Norwegian “to ensure a sustainable company and secure jobs in the future.”

The Financial Times new on-line publication “First FT” spoke to Frode Steen, a professor at NHH business school in Bergen:  “Kjos (Bjorn Kjos founder of the airline and CEO) has challenged the way of doing airline business in Scandinavia.  He is a tough guy. But this is a tough time, particularly when they are now in a situation where they have lost money and he has this long haul show running.”  Mr Steen said that Norwegian was in the midst of possibly the most serious crisis in its decade as a low-cost airline. See also The Sunday Times and Norwegian Air in this issue.  www.norwegian.com