The budget carrier put "the majority" of the few flights it wasn’t able to operate in September down to Gatwick airport’s shortage of ATC staff, as well as national strike action in Italy.

Norwegian was nonetheless able to operate 99.7% of scheduled flights in September – "the highest level since the pandemic" – despite the issues, which has since seen Gatwick impose a daily flight cap after claiming up to 30% of Nats ATC operatives at the airport had been laid low with sickness.

This cap was this week extended until mid-October so it remains to be seen what impact it will have on Norwegian’s operations in October.

Its passenger carryings topped two million in September (2,030,052), up by 8% compared with September 2022, with 84.6% of September flights departing within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure time.

“September was yet another good month for Norwegian," said chief executive Geir Karlsen. "Our recorded regularity is now at the strongest level in more than 18 months, while our on-time-performance also improves further."

Norwegian operated an average of 80 aircraft in September, providing capacity of 3,208 million seat kilometres; actual passenger traffic ran to 2,696 million seat kilometres, resulting in a load factor of 84%.

The carrier is, though, poised to reduce capacity "to align with travel patterns in the quieter winter trading period".

However, it said demand for travel to southern Europe had been "robust" from its Nordic markets, with a new trend for autumn city breaks to eastern Europe coming to the fore.

"Additional routes to new destinations will be announced in November," Norwegian added.