Earlier this year in January, Norwegian Air Shuttle, the fourth-largest low cost carrier in Europe, decided to offer a 1 kroner ($0.19) promotion for a newly-opened route between Copenhagen and Karup. The promo would have been a success too, had not a competitor decided to step in and buy the tickets.

Norwegian

According to a Norwegian Air Shuttle spokesperson, their competitor Cimber Sterling’s employees bought at least 650 tickets under the 1 kroner offer.

Using fake names, one Cimber Sterling employee purchased 458 tickets, another one bought 100, and two others hogged 50 each.  To make matters worse, even two Cimber board members bought 18 tickets each.

End result – No one showed up, Norwegian’s planes went empty, and the promo was a bust. Cimber Sterling CEO Jacob Krogsgaard apologized, stressing that it was misguided loyalty on the part of some overeager employees, and not a corporate conspiracy.

But the story has now taken another turn, because Norwegian publicized the real names of the Cimber employees involved. These employees are now claiming a violation of their privacy, and Norway’s Data Protection Agency seems to agree.

It now looks like Norwegian Airlines will have to prove that they publicized the identities as a journalistic exercise, and not with some malicious intent to get back at the Cimber employees for busting their promo.

While the Norwegian-Cimber Sterling feud is a strange case of a good airline promo gone bad, there have been other cases in the past, some just as bizarre.

Ryanair Iberia Barcelona stunt

Sometime back, European budget carrier Ryanair offered a free flight to people who were willing to come to the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona and hold up placards explaining why they preferred Ryanair over Spanish competitor Iberia.

So many people turned up that Sinead Finn, head of sales and marketing for Europe for Ryanair, handed out all 500 vouchers she had, and when the rest of the crowd found they would not be getting a free flight, things turned ugly (see video).

The Ryainair rep had to be rescued by the police, and the crowd then turned on Ryanair, rewriting their placard messages into anti-Ryanair slogans.

Last year in June, Hungarian budget carrier Wizz Air cooked up a promo for their 5th anniversary celebrations, where they attached free coupons worth about $50 each to 1000 balloons. The balloons were being held under a net in Budapest’s City center, and the plan was to release them after a press conference.

Someone in the crowd thought it would be a good idea to pop a balloon and collect the coupons while it was still on the ground. This triggered a free-for-all, and by the time the press arrived to cover the event, the crowd had collected all the coupons and gone home, and there was nothing left to see or do. 

Norwegian photo by Scott Wright

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