In a statement issued on Thursday, the airline revealed that for the first time ever, it had seen a decline in passenger numbers compared to the same month the previous year.
Some 1,726,180 passengers flew with Norwegian in March, a four percent drop compared to March 2014.
“The strike among the Scandinavian pilots affected our company considerably and amounted to huge additional costs,” CEO Bjørn Kjos said in the statement. “Had we not had such a large customer base outside of Scandinavia and so many hardworking employees, the situation would have been even more difficult.”
According to the airline the 350m kroner cost was split roughly equally between the cost of cancelled flights (120m), the cost of caring for passengers (110m), and the loss of future bookings (120m).
The $43m cost breaks down to an average loss of nearly $4m for every day of the strike, or more $20,000 for each of the 2,000 cancelled flights.
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