While thousands of Norwegians are about to start the holiday season, lead crew deficiencies in Norwegian airlines have caused the company to cancel a number of flights.

It affects those vacationers hard since in high season it is both difficult and expensive to get rebooked or book new tickets.

Departures to popular holiday destinations such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Spain were canceled Saturday, both from Oslo, Værnes and Stavanger, the newspaper VG reports.

According Adresseavisen a family of eight received late  Friday night an SMS from Norwegian who informed them that the flight to Malaga in Spain Saturday afternoon was canceled.

Flights to Norway from Spain and Italy are also cancelled. To add insult to injury a number of domestic flights have been canceled as well.

– Sorry

Press Contact Linda Olsen for Norwegian apologized for these cancellations. She notes that Norwegian has been working on solutions for these departures, and that the SMS notification is automatically sent out when the flight is canceled within the system.

– I agree that it’s not ideal to send such an SMS so late, she says.

According to Avinor travel overview Norwegian has cancelled at least 18 departures abroad and domestically Saturday, NRK reported.

Norwegian can not say anything about how the situation will develop in the coming days, or if it will get more canceled flights on Sunday and Monday. Nor do they have a complete overview of how many passengers are affected.

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today