Ben Mutzabaugh

USA TODAY

Aside from casinos and nightlife, hot weather is one of the things that lures tourists to Las Vegas. But the Las Vegas summers apparently are too hot for one budget airline.

European low-cost carrier Norwegian Air will suspend its four Las Vegas routes in March, saying hot weather there has created performance issues for its heavily loaded Boeing 787 aircraft.

“This is not something we’ve had happen anywhere else,” Norwegian spokesman Anders Lindström told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the first newspaper to report the story. “It didn’t happen that often, but it was enough times to make us realize that it was (an) issue and we didn’t want to keep delaying our customers.”

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Lindström confirmed the development to Today in the Sky. He said Norwegian’s Las Vegas routes had been performing well, but that the carrier has decided to adjust its schedule there rather than risk continued operational delays during the summer months. Flights operating on Norwegian Air's summer schedule typically operate from March through November.

“Norwegian Air is making our Las Vegas routes seasonal for 2017 as the planes’ ability to take off during high-temperature periods was limited at times this past summer,” Lindström said in a statement to Today in the Sky. “This unfortunately led to a few delays earlier this year, which is something we do not want to repeat during the summer of 2017."

Norwegian Air flies to four European destinations from Las Vegas. The airline began flying from the city last year with nonstop flights to both Copenhagen and Stockholm. The carrier expanded its schedule there with routes to London Gatwick and Oslo, Norway, that launched within the past three weeks.

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“Our Las Vegas routes are otherwise doing exceptionally well, with very high load factors,” Lindström added. “As Las Vegas is a very popular destination for Europeans, we are looking at alternatives as we hope to return to a year-round service in 2018.”

The problem stems from the fact that commercial airliners face performance limitations in extreme heat, which results in less-dense air that makes it more difficult to achieve lift. The issue occasionally becomes a concern for airports in the U.S. Southwest, though that typically only becomes an issue when temperatures are well into the 110s and are threatening local records.

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For Norwegian, however, the issue is compounded by the carrier’s high-density seating configurations that add extra weight to its planes. Norwegian packs 291 seats on to its Boeing 787 -8 models and 344 on to its bigger 787-9s. By comparison, United's 787-8 and 787-9 Dreamliner models seat 219 and 252 passengers, respectively.

“Given the weight of those additional Norwegian passengers and all that accompanies them, the airline this summer found close to 300 people on board, including crew, and its planes’ ability to take-off during high-temperature periods was sometimes limited,” Las Vegas airport spokesman Chris Jones said to the Review-Journal.

With that extra weight, Norwegian has calculated that its Dreamliners shouldn’t take off if ground temperatures hit 104 degrees (40 Celsius). Norwegian declined to tell the Review-Journal how many heat delays it took this summer, though the newspaper notes “temperatures soared to 104 degrees and higher in Las Vegas on 60 days this year, according to the National Weather Service.” Norwegian offers less-than-daily service on all four of its Las Vegas routes.

For now, Norwegian will convert its Las Vegas routes from year-round to seasonal service. Going forward, the carrier says it’s looking at options – including flights that operate off during cooler hours of the day – that would allow it to resume a full-year schedule in 2018.

TWITTER: You can follow Today in the Sky editor Ben Mutzabaugh at twitter.com/TodayInTheSky

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