A two-month nightmare is over for Norwegian Airlines: it finally got a stranded plane out of Iran
Have you ever heard the phrase “a perfect storm”? A perfect storm is when every possible thing goes wrong. And Norwegian Airlines faced a perfect storm when one of its planes made an emergency landing. Emergency landings are fairly common in the aviation industry. The problem was, this landing happened in Iran—and they couldn’t get the plane out for two months.
Hi there, welcome back to Plain English. I’m Jeff. JR is the producer, and this is episode number 133 of Plain English. That means you can get today’s transcript, absolutely free, at PlainEnglish.com/133. And as always our transcripts have interactive translations of all the hardest words and phrases from English to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Chinese, and Japanese.
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Stranded Norwegian Air plane finally home in Oslo
The flight started uneventfully. A Norwegian Air flight took off from Dubai, headed for Oslo, Norway, on December 14. But during the flight, the airplane experienced engine trouble: low oil pressure in one engine. That, in and of itself, was not too bad—the brand-new Boeing 737 MAX has two engines and can land safely with only one functioning engine. The problem, however, is that the plane was flying high above Iran, a country in which Norwegian Air has never done any business.
The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Shiraz. The fifth-most populous city in Iran is known for its flowers, poetry, and beautiful gardens; it is not known to be an aviation hub. Still, the plane was able to land safely. But, uh, just one problem. Nobody on the plane has a visa to be in Iran, and Norwegian has no way to fix its plane. Yikes.
The captain worked out a deal with the officials at the airport: all the passengers are allowed to stay in a hotel, but they have to give up their passports first. Now, if you travel internationally, you know that you never let your passport out of your sight. That is basically the only official thing that proves your identity—it’s literally your passport out of trouble and back home. Iran has a shaky political relationship with the West—we’ll get to that in a minute—and of course the religion, language, customs, laws are all different. It’s not a place to be taking risks. But the passengers had no choice: they left their passports with the officials at the airport and were taken to a hotel.
It was luxurious. A piano player in the lobby; sumptuous buffet of food and (non-alcoholic) drink; comfortable rooms. The passengers were not allowed to leave, so most of them went to bed (sober). The next day, Norwegian Air had arranged for a new plane to get them out. The replacement plane, hilariously, had to make another emergency landing in Poland since they didn’t have enough fuel—but they eventually got to their destination.
All’s well that ends well, right? Uh, not exactly. You see, Norwegian Air still had this minor matter of a non-functioning airplane stuck in Iran. And that’s where this gets really interesting.
You remember what I said before? Norwegian Air doesn’t do business in Iran. That means they don’t have spare parts; they don’t have mechanics; they don’t have any employees there; they have no relationship with the government. But they do have a stranded plane, and that was a big problem for one of Europe’s biggest low-cost airlines. That big problem was further complicated by the fact that the United States has economic sanctions on Iran. The sanctions say that American companies, products, and services are not allowed be involved with Iran. No product with more than ten percent American made parts is allowed to be imported into Iran. Remember that the airplane was a Boeing 737, and there’s not a replacement engine out there for a Boeing 737 that doesn’t have a lot of American-made components.
There was almost no way that this plane was getting fixed without any type of American-made products. It needed a new engine; of course, it was going to need American parts. There is a way to get around the economic sanctions in an emergency. If you think you deserve an exception to the sanctions, you need to get permission from the US government before you do so. Trouble was, the US government was shut down for about a month. During that time, non-essential employees were not allowed to work, since the national government didn’t have a budget. There was nobody to process the application—and the airplane just sat there.
The low-cost airline was losing money on this by the day. Not only were they unable to fly one of their very expensive airplanes, but they were probably paying storage fees to the airport in Iran. By all accounts, the Iranians were good hosts and cooperative with their unexpected guest at the airport, but there was probably always going to be a limit to their patience.
Despite the costs, Norwegian and Boeing both kept working the phones and eventually secured the needed permission from the American government to import the parts needed to get the plane going again. They eventually succeeded—seventy days into this ordeal—and the plane finally went back to Stockholm on February 22.
The plane was only six weeks old when it had that first engine problem! Oh brother, not what you want six weeks after you buy a plane for over a hundred million dollars. What I was wondering, as I was listening to this, was why airlines even fly over Iran to begin with. So the answer is, there is really no great way to get from Dubai to Europe. You either have to fly over Iraq and Syria—not a good idea right now—or fly way out of the way to go over Egypt—also, not ideal unless you want to spend a lot of extra time and money—or just go over Iran. So that’s what they do.
If you liked today’s topic, you might like listening to a full-speed English podcast about it. That’s actually how I first learned about this issue. One of the podcasts I listen to is calledPlanet Money, and they did an episode about this. So go to your podcast app and search for “Planet Money” and then find the episode called “The Lost Plane,” and you can listen to one of the passengers tell his side of the story.
Time to say hi to a few listeners. First of all, congratulations to Sedef from Turkey—she got a great score on the IELTS and wrote to JR and me to give us the good news. Congratulations Sedef. Juan liked Kina Grannis as much as I did in Crazy Rich Asians, by the way. He’s a pharmacist from the beautiful—and I mean beautiful—city of Medellín, Colombia. Danilo from Brazil loved the Crazy Rich Asians episode, and he actually reads that book in English. Danilo says that if you can understand Plain English, then you’d actually enjoy reading Crazy Rich Asians, since the vocabulary is pretty simple.
Couple more: Anne from Germany is fifteen years old, listening from Ireland. She’s obviously getting a head start on learning English; I’m jealous: I wish I took language learning seriously at that age. And speaking of Ireland, Ana from Brazil has been living in Dublin for two years now; she went to learn English. Listen, I’m telling you: if you go to Ireland to learn English, you are brave. The Irish accent is very difficult to understand; sometimes I don’t even understand the Irish accent, and I’m half Irish. So, Ana and Anne, have a pint of Guinness for me, and congratulations to the two of you for learning English in Ireland.
If you would like to get in touch with us here at Plain English, there are several ways to do that. You can send us an email. I’m [email protected]; JR is [email protected]. You can connect with us on WhatsApp by sending a WhatsApp message to +1 312 967-8757
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