Scandinavian airline Norwegian is ending flights between Ireland and North America effective September 2019. The airline is blaming the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX for no longer making the routes commercially viable.

The low cost carrier will end all routes from Dublin, Cork, and Shannon to both the United States and Canada. This will take effect from September 15th, 2019.

Since the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX in early 2019, Norwegian has been stuck wet leasing aircraft from various operators to carry out these routes, and with the additional costs, these services are no longer viable to the airline.

Norwegian operated its first transatlantic flight from Ireland in June 2016 between Cork and Boston. The airline expanded rapidly and hit a peak in May 2018 with 11,000 two way seats between North America and Ireland.

The decision to terminate Ireland to North America flights will not affect the other long haul operations of the airline, as those flights are operated by the much larger Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.