Norse Atlantic Airways significant person Bjørn Kjos
Corporate affairs
Ownership
Norse Atlantic Airways is headquartered in Arendal, Norway, and is wholly owned by parent company Norse Atlantic ASA. At its establishment during early 2021, the airline was 63% owned by CEO Bjørn Tore Larsen and affiliates, 15% owned by Bjørn Kjos, and 12% by Bjørn Kise. Following the parent company's listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange, Bjørn Tore Larsen remained the majority shareholder with a 12.4% stake, followed by institutional investors such as Delphi Nordic (6.7%), DNB SMB (6.3%), and Skagen Vekst (5.9%) by January 2022.Norse Atlantic also established Norse Atlantic UK as a British subsidiary on 10 May 2021, with the company receiving a British AOC and operating licence on 28 September 2022.Criticism
Following Norse Atlantic's public reveal in March 2021, observers and media outlets drew comparisons to the similarity of its business model to Norwegian Air Shuttle and its long-haul operations. A factor included the presence of key executives with connections to Norwegian among Norse Atlantic's founders and investors, with Kjos serving as Norwegian's former CEO, Kise formerly serving as Norwegian's chairman, and Larsen the chairman of OSM Aviation, a company responsible for providing staff for many of Norwegian's flight operations prior to Norwegian's restructuring. Other aspects of Norse Atlantic's proposed operations additionally coincided, including its choice of destinations, and the specific Boeing 787 airframes it leased being previously operated by Norwegian, with the planes to retain the same seating configuration when operated by Norse Atlantic.Additional parallels to Norwegian's past actions were drawn when on 24 March 2021, United States congressman Peter DeFazio urged in a statement that a foreign air carrier permit be denied to Norse Atlantic, on the basis of detrimental effects caused by the 2016 issuing of a foreign air carrier permit to Norwegian Air International, claiming the company had circumvented Norway's labor protections through Irish incorporation. In response to the allegations, Norse Atlantic CEO Bjørn Tore Larsen stated that the airline is an independent Norwegian company and had planned to have permanent employees based in the United States. During May 2021, the airline reached agreements with unions representing flight attendants including those based in the United States, prior to their employment. The British Airline Pilots Association also announced a partnership with the airline in September 2021.