Norwegian Airlines to double its workforce at Barcelona Airport to 755 employees in 2017

Barcelona (CNA).- Norwegian airlines is betting big on Barcelona airport. The company announced in November that it will offer direct connections from the city to Argentina and Chile in 2017. Furthermore, next year, from the 5th of June, it will also offer four weekly routes to New York, three to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and two weekly to Miami. To make this increase in operations possible, the Vice President of Human Resources of the company, Jan Dahm-Simonsen, announced this Monday that Norwegian Airlines will double its workforce in Barcelona Airport, from the current 354 people to 755 in August 2017. The 755 jobs will include administrative, flight and ground assistance personnel. “We are very happy about the number of jobs created in this region and in the city”, stressed Dahm-Simonsen. “Norwegian employs more than 350 people in Barcelona and this is just the very beginning. In the coming months we will more than double this figure”, he stated.

“Today is a day for celebration”, said the Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, in a similar vein. Representatives from the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, Barcelona City Hall, the Airport and the Catalan Government have worked with a “shared goal: make Barcelona and Catalonia more present in a world with direct connections”, he added. “If we want to be a hub and we work for it, we need companies to trust in us and locate their headquarters at Barcelona Airport to fly directly to the first economical and geographical regions in the world”, Baiget claimed.

Norwegian to connect Barcelona with North and South America

Latin America is the new destination where Norwegian airline will fly from Barcelona in 2017. The Norwegian company will provide low-cost connections to Argentina and Chile. However, it is yet to be announced in what period of the year the first flights will take off.

The routes to Latin America are to be added to the long-haul flights that Norwegian will launch in June 2017 from Barcelona to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Miami. The airline plans to offer 325,000 seats throughout the first year for North American destinations. Almost half of them will be for the flights to California, as Barcelona Airport will be the only one in Spain with a direct connection to San Francisco.

The airline inaugurated two international routes from Barcelona in November, to Tel Aviv and Reykjavik. According to data provided by the company, during the winter season, the airline forecasts the operation of a total of 3.2 million seats in the whole of Spain, which represents an increase of 44% in comparison to 2015.