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Norwegian Air Swaps Its Logo for British Airways' After England Beats Norway in World Cup Bet
After Norway's World Cup loss to England, Norwegian Air honored a social media wager by replacing its Instagram logo with British Airways' emblem for 24 hours.
The gist
Norwegian Air replaced its logo with British Airways' on Instagram after losing a World Cup bet on England vs. Norway.
Continuing coverage
All Social Media →Norwegian Air made an unusual gesture following the FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between England and Norway by replacing its own logo on Instagram with that of British Airways. This move came as a result of a social media bet between the two airlines, sparked by the heated rivalry leading up to the match held in Miami. Norwegian Air had challenged British Airways to a wager where the losing side would have to display the winner's logo on their social media platforms for a full day.
The bet originated from Norwegian Air's playful trolling of British Airways in the days before the game, culminating in an agreement that the loser must swap logos for 24 hours. Surprisingly, British Airways' lawyers approved the arrangement, showing a willing spirit to engage in this lighthearted rivalry. Prior to the game, interns from both airlines exchanged USB sticks loaded with their respective logos at British Airways’ headquarters near London Heathrow Airport, prepping for the possibility of having to carry out the logo swap.
The match ended with a dramatic 2-1 victory for England, thanks to two decisive goals by Jude Bellingham, the midfielder for Real Madrid. Norway’s loss meant Norwegian Air was bound by the bet to change its branding. True to their word, Norwegian Air promptly updated their Instagram profile picture to display the British Airways logo, marking a rare and striking instance of inter-airline branding antics coinciding with a sporting event.
In addition to the logo change, Norwegian Air posted a message expressing good sportsmanship, acknowledging the friendly nature of the bet and wishing both England and British Airways well in the tournament's remaining stages. British Airways responded with a humorous compliment on the new logo display, while oneworld alliance partner Qantas and Malaysia Airlines joined the conversation, the latter commenting on the unusual speed and decisiveness Norwegian demonstrated in changing its airline branding for the stunt.
Norwegian Air’s support for the Norwegian national team had been prominent ahead of the match. Cabins were decked out with Norwegian flags, and crew members encouraged passengers to participate in the ‘Viking Row,’ a fan movement symbolic of Norway's team spirit. This bet and subsequent branding switch provided Norwegian Air with a viral marketing moment that engaged both football fans and aviation enthusiasts alike, alongside promoting flights between the UK and Norway with a discount offer after the match.
Historically, Norwegian Air has had a competitive relationship with British Airways beyond social media banter. They once directly challenged BA on London Gatwick to North America routes, entering the low-cost long-haul market with their Boeing 787 Dreamliners. However, complications such as maintenance issues with Rolls-Royce engines affected these routes and pressured Norwegian’s financial health.
Eventually, Norwegian retreated from its ambitious long-haul expansion to focus on its core Norwegian market, a decision that has proved beneficial. After restructuring and privatizing much of its operations post-pandemic, Norwegian Air has returned to profitability, albeit with a smaller, more focused fleet. Today’s social media stunt reflects the airline’s lighter engagement with customers and an embrace of playful rivalry, signaling a reinvigorated brand presence in the competitive airline industry.
Frequently asked questions
- What was the bet between Norwegian Air and British Airways about?
- The two airlines made a bet linked to the FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between England and Norway, agreeing the loser must display the winner's logo on their Instagram page for 24 hours.
- How did Norwegian Air show its support for the Norwegian soccer team during the World Cup?
- Norwegian Air decorated its cabins with Norwegian flags and encouraged passengers and crew to participate in the 'Viking Row,' a symbol of support for Norway's national soccer team.
- Why did Norwegian Air previously withdraw from long-haul routes to North America?
- Norwegian Air faced maintenance issues with Rolls-Royce engines on its Boeing 787 fleet and financial difficulties, leading it to abandon its long-haul ambitions and focus on its core Norwegian market.
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All MRO/Maintenance →
Avia Solutions Group appoints FL Technics chief as new CEO amid reshuffling
Former leader steps down and transfers to new position as head of finance. Wet-lease specialist Avia Solutions Group has named the head of its maintenance operation as its new chief executive. Zilvinas Lapinskas has been leading the group's FL Technics division. Avia Solutions says he has been appointed chief executive from 7 July. He succeeds Jonas Janukenas who will step down from the top post and transfer to the position of chief financial officer. Avia Solutions oversees multiple wet-lease providers around the world — with a total fleet of 136 aircraft — but has been undergoing an extensive restructuring , with some of its carriers ceasing operations . "Over the past several years, the group has built a strong foundation for sustainable growth," says Lapinskas. "I look forward to accelerating that momentum." He says his priority is to "strengthen our operational footprint" and reinforce long-term partnerships. Avia Solutions credits him with having "transformed" the FL Technics division, and says he has a "proven record of scaling operations in complex, highly-regulated markets". Janukenas says that, as head of finance, he will concentrate on ensuring the company maintains "financial discipline and strategic agility".
Delta's once-stellar operational performance shows visible declines amid pilot staffing woes
We’ve already talked about American’s operational issues , but today I’m looking at you, Delta. American hasn’t been a star performer for ages, but Delta? Delta has been the king for years. That crown appears to have some tarnish on it these days. You may have heard about the Delta pilots setting up a website to help travelers deal with disruption. This is nothing but a negotiating ploy. The contract becomes amendable later this year, and they are just starting to chirp about it. This won’t help negotiations, but it does attract a lot of media coverage which Delta management certainly doesn’t like. The hope is presumably that this will put pressure on Delta to make concessions to get a deal done. It won’t, and the reality is… I don’t care about this at all. What I do care about is that this effort is coming from somewhere — the union isn’t making this issue up. Delta does have an operational problem. So today I’ll focus on what has been going on. In a note from COO Dan Janki in May, the airline indicated it was happy with its on-time performance, but “we need to improve controllable cancels and IROP recovery.” I’m not sure I agree. Oh sure, it does have a problem with cancellations and irregular operations, but on-time performance has suffered as well. While there are several issues that have led to this decline, one of the hot button topics is centered around pilot availability. A letter from Ryan Gumm, SVP Flight Operations from April, explained that trips that needed coverage saw acceptance rates plummet from 37 percent to two percent. To me, this sounds like an effort to blame labor, so I spoke with Delta’s pilots union chair Eric Criswell to get his side. Eric said they don’t have access to the dataset that Delta referred to in that latter, but he wanted to point out that the number of trips made available has jumped significantly in the last year. You would expect acceptance rates to drop in a bigger pool. From the union’s perspective, staffing is a primary concern in this whole mess. In 2025, they say pilot demand hours increased 4.2 percent versus last year, but the actual number of pilots employed at the airline fell. Thanks to that, they also said that pilots are working on their days off at a higher rate than in the past. In a recent Chairman’s Letter from the union, it said “the Company is now hiring aggressively to address their self-imposed staffing shortfall.” The airline certainly doesn’t dispute that. It is hiring as we speak, so clearly some pilot modeling went wrong last year. Regardless of the reason for these issues, Delta is not living up to the carefully-constructed brand image as an operational rock star over the last couple decades. Though as mentioned this isn’t just about cancellations and IROPS, let’s start with those cancellations first. As usual, I turned to Anuvu for the data. This is where Delta used to excel the most. It almost never canceled flights back in its heyday, but now it is doing that far more often. Instead of looking at aggregate numbers, I thought it more help to compare to the industry. Delta Completion Factor vs Industry By Month Data via Anuvu , Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN Remember, a good standard is to try to complete 99 percent of flights or better, so if Delta is consistently up by 1 to 2 points on the industry as it was for years? That’s a huge difference. But it has slipped, and this year it has been downright worse than the industry overall in more than one month. Outside of April, it has not been above 99 percent in any single this year. We’ve talked about why that might be happening, but what about on-time percentage? I don’t like what I see there either. Delta doesn’t seem concerned in its communications, but maybe it shouldn’t be… Delta A14 % By Month Data via Anuvu , Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN Delta was performing better than industry even until the end of 2024 with just a little hiccup thanks to the Crowdstrike failure at the end of July that year. But then, A14 has continued to trail off. It has rebounded after a pretty bad winter, but it is still below where it has been historically. One of the big issues here seems to be block time. Delta was known for padding block times to improve performance, and there’s nothing wrong with that as a strategy. It certainly bought the airline massive goodwill. But that seems to have changed, and it just hasn’t given itself the block time it needs to run an on-time airline. Let’s take a look. Delta B0 % By Month Data via Anuvu , Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN As a reminder, B0 is the percentage of time that a flight operates within the allotted block time. It can run 5 hours late, but if the airline files a schedule that shows gate pushback to gate arrival is 74 minutes and the flight operates in 74 minutes or less? That counts as meeting block time. In the chart above, you can see a marked fall-off in 2024. Delta must have lowered its block times to try to improve utilization and lower costs, and the result has been performance degradation. It has in some recent months performed worse than the industry overall. So what is Delta doing? We’ve already talked about pilot hiring which will help bolster the reserves that are needed to cover trips, but the airline is also bulking up in crew scheduling and customer-facing agents so it can better help when things go wrong. It has also been having issues with what it calls “fleet health, so it is working with the maintenance organization to try to fix some of those gaps. There are other moves it can make around the edges as well. What isn’t clear to me is where Delta wants to be. Is it hoping to get back to the more expensive but more reliable operation it had? Or is it ok being a little lower down the list if it saves the airline some money? Now that Delta has built a brand on operational excellence, it probably has a more complicated decision than others might.
1976 Piper PA-32R-300 Lance offers six-seat capacity and performance upgrades
Each day, the team at Aircraft For Sale picks an airplane that catches our attention because it is unique, represents a good deal, or has other interesting qualities. You can read Aircraft For Sale: Today's Top Pick at FLYINGMag.com daily. Today's Top Pick is a 1976 Piper PA-32R-300 Lance. Aircraft manufacturers are known for developing existing models into new ones. Often this method makes more economic sense than embarking on a clean- sheet project. Piper is especially famous for squeezing, pulling, and stretching its original PA-28 Cherokee in ways that resulted in a whole fleet of airplanes, from trainers to twins. Enlarging the PA-28 to become the PA-32 Cherokee Six was one of Piper's greatest moves because it gave pilots the flying equivalent of the family station wagon—at a time when station wagons were very much in vogue and economical six-place airplanes were rare. If you ask me, though, it was the decision to retract the gear and further modify the Six to produce the Lance that truly moved Piper into the mainstream of high-performance personal transport. The Lance's cabin has plenty of room for six seats. [Credit: Bradford Fuller] The aircraft for sale today has plenty of space for growing families traveling on vacation or colleagues making business trips to cities without airline service. A wide cabin means occupants are not constantly rubbing shoulders and passengers have space to get comfortable on long flights. This heavy hauler has the bonus of LoPresti aerodynamic modifications to improve speed. It also received new paint and interior in 1998. This 1976 Piper Lance has 4,417 hours on the airframe and 512 hours since overhaul on its Lycoming IO-540K1G5D engine, which also underwent a top overhaul 240 hours ago. The aircraft's Hartzell Scimitar propeller has logged 250 hours since new. The Lance has a gross weight of 3,600 pounds, useful load of 1,508 pounds, and fuel capacity of 98 gallons. This Lance's panel includes Garmin GPS and other updated equipment. [Credit: Bradford Fuller] The panel includes a Garmin GNS 430W GPS/nav/com, King KX170B nav/com, AutoControl IIIB autopilot, Garmin 495, GTX 345 transponder, KMA 20 TSO audio panel, FS 1000II intercom, Narco DME, and JPI EDM 700 engine monitor. Pilots looking for the carrying capacity of a large SUV with cross-country performance that feels more like that of a super sports car should consider this 1976 Piper PA-34R-300, which is available on AiircraftForSale . If you're interested in financing, you can do so with FLYING Finance. Use our airplane loan calculator to calculate your estimated monthly payments. Or, to speak with an aviation finance specialist, visit flyingfinance.com . FLYING Magazine: Air Compare: Piper Lance vs. Saratoga FLYING Magazine: Piper Saratoga Avionics Install: Part 1 Plane + Pilot : Piper Cherokee Six/Lance/Saratoga Plane + Pilot : Piper Lance/Turbo Lance Plane + Pilot : Piper Saratoga The Aviation Consumer: Used Aircraft Guide: Piper Saratoga and Lance
AOPA Foundation to launch high school aviation maintenance curriculum by 2028
The AOPA Foundation will add a maintenance and manufacturing pathway to its High School Aviation STEM Curriculum as early as 2028.
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