Game changer? £300 to New York from Gatwick on a Norwegian 787

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• Scarecrow says:

  18 Oct18 October 06:48

  When I was looking at FFL last night return flights had shot up to over £600. Still a bargain in school hols.

• erico1875 says:

  18 Oct18 October 07:04

  With just one plane, a 787 as well, they will be plagued with delays and cancellations.. GLOBESPAN were a profitable and reliable low cost airline until they started offering trans Atlantic. Before long their reputation was in tatters and they folded.

  • BY188B says:

    19 Oct19 October 13:20

    Norwegian have 2 787 delivered and another 6 on order.

• Phillip says:

  18 Oct18 October 07:26

  I’m not particularly interested in using Norwegian, but as Raffles pointed out, it will be interesting to see how BA and Virgin respond. For this purpose alone, I’d like to see Norwegian do well, just to keep the others on their toes. A big challenge, nevertheless, for Norwegian.

• Neil Spellings says:

  18 Oct18 October 07:34

  Also rather bizarrely, the per-person fare changes as soon as you go beyond one person in your booking

• James67 says:

  18 Oct18 October 07:53

  I read that Norwegian 787 flights were operating at only 49% reliability, they had so many problems they grounded one and demanded Boei g fix it. Latest mishap is an 8×4′ panel falling off an Air India aircraft in flight. I think these will just be limitted availability and/or lauch fares. I suspect in reality fares will be comparable to promotional fares on full service carriers once all fees included. Like all LCC (possibly excepting Air Asia) they are probably hoping to attract sufficient custom from the less-savvy travel market that is easily mislead by slick advertising.

  • James67 says:

    18 Oct18 October 10:01

    Agreed. I think if BA were smart they would lauch a whole new LCCesk website with all the usual propaganda and marketing to sell their shorthaul. There would be no need for new planes, livery or anything. Just use two different approaches to sell their existing product They fail to attract a whole market sector by not approaching it in the proper way.

    • Roger says:

      18 Oct18 October 10:07

      Or they could set up their own LCC. And when they find that it was affecting their regular routes, they could sell it it easyJet.

      No, wait …

      • James67 says:

        18 Oct18 October 11:45

        LOL or just go for a 5 cabin config and add a LCC section at the back of every plane following the PAL model. They could even promote one of the benefits as being statistically the safest seats onboard!

        • Roger says:

          18 Oct18 October 12:35

          BA franchise Comair t/a British Airways do this (or something similar) in South Africa.

          Comair also operate an LCC, kulula.com with flight numbers consisting of 3 or 4 digits. 3-digit flight numbers are kulula-branded, 4-digit flight numbers are codeshares with BA!

          I understand that inflight service on the co-branded flights is the same, but only BA passengers earn and redeem miles.

          Seems to work in SA!

    • Lady London says:

      18 Oct18 October 20:43

      Excellent idea. As you say it just needs a front end and some publicity to direct people to the front end in the same way as ryanair and easyjet get their feed.

      I wish Norwegian every success. I just wish I could stop recalling Freddie Laker and what happened to his flights from Gatwick. I know Raffles survived his trip, but for the moment I refuse to step on a 787 Dreamliner anytime soon due to the extremely worrying reports of electrical problems. Otherwise I’m a huge fan of Boeing.

• Tim says:

  18 Oct18 October 08:42

  Hold luggage, seat -selection and in-flight catering are not actually required! The costs for these should not be regarded as unavoidable ‘fees’ – unless you are so set in your flying habits that you can’t imagine life without them.

  As regards reliability, being an EU airline, Norwegian are bound by the tough EU directive which is proving a game-changer for the airline industry. The cost of automatic compensation for a serious delay is less than ensuring that a spare aircraft is available at short notice.

  The particular value I see is that one-ways are half the price of returns – a revolution in long haul dominated by antiquated fare practices. This makes that next repositioning cruise to/from the U.S. viable and for less than the taxes on an Avios redemption.

  • Barney says:

    18 Oct18 October 08:51

    Doesnt seem to be incredibly cheap. I once flew bru-yyz-lga-ewr-bru with AC/SN for €352, all inc, no error fare, off season.

    • Rob says:

      18 Oct18 October 08:55

      BA has done £299 to New York in the darkest dankest days of January not so long ago. But August is usually very expensive in economy (and cheap in Club World!).

    • Roger says:

      18 Oct18 October 08:58

      That was then. I wonder what that would cost now.
      If you can get the <£300 fares now – and some are still available – they ARE cheap!

  • James67 says:

    18 Oct18 October 10:13

    Dont put so much faith in tbe regs. The airlines will do the math. If its costing them too much they will find some extraordinary reason to avoid paying it. The majority of pax will get weary of the hassle. Despite the separate charging of luggage, meals etc I still suspect that after initial launch period the different between Norwegian and BA Virgin united etc will be low. I am also not happy at these smallish 787s hogging slots at already overcrowded airports. On high volume routes such as NYC and LA I think airlines should operate larger aircraft.

    • BD says:

      18 Oct18 October 13:05

      The 787 isn’t all that small. It is similar in size and floor space to the 777-200 or A330-300. Although initially marketed as a 767 replacement, it offers 777 floor space for less than 767 operating costs.

      • James67 says:

        18 Oct18 October 18:08

        I thought the 7878 was only seating around 200, must have picked that up wrong someplace.

  • signol says:

    18 Oct18 October 11:15

    Are they bound by EU rules as Norway is not in the EU?

    • callum says:

      18 Oct18 October 13:17

      Norway, as part of the EEA, is bound by most EU rules (including this one). In fact I believe they are forced to implement something like 75% of EU law/regulation but as they are not part of the EU, get absolutely no say whatsoever in their creation.

      Though regardless, it’s about destinations not the nationality of the carrier. Any flight from London is covered.

      • BD says:

        18 Oct18 October 13:56

        The 787s are actually registered in Ireland and Norwegian now has an Irish AOC, so the long-haul in indeed an EU airline.
        An Irish airline, called Norwegian flying between LGW and the USA. Confused yet?

• nath says:

  18 Oct18 October 09:11

  I read somewhere it is obviously an introductory offer to launch Norwegian’s new routes from LGW to the US. After that prices will come back to more normal level. Normal prices will probably still be cheaper than BA and Virgin though…

  • Rob says:

    18 Oct18 October 09:42

    BA and Virgin can crush it, though.

    New York may be viable at £500 per seat post price increase. The LA price is bonkers, though. It is almost twice as far as New York so twice the fuel burn, but they are charging only a modest premium. Meanwhile, BA is running A380s to LA with plenty of business class seats to subsidise cheap economy ones.

    Quick Google search shows that the fuel cost of a 787 is $24 per nautical mile. London to LA is 9500 nautical miles return. Roughly, you are looking at $200,000 of fuel per return trip.

    Lease cost of a 787 is $1.2m per month, possible more to Norwegian as they are not blue chip. That is another $60,000 for a 1.5 day return flight.

    We are at $250k / £150k before any other costs. 291 seats on the plane. Just to cover fuel and plane lease costs, you need to charge £250 return BEFORE taxes, so around £375. And that assumes 100 per cent occupancy and before staff, insurance, marketing and hundreds of other costs.

    • BD says:

      18 Oct18 October 13:20

      Staggering figures there Raffles. Just shows how tough the long-haul market is. Loads are going to have to be at or near 100% for this to have any hope of surviving. I don’t see why BA/AA, VS/DL and the LH family/UA would not dump cheap seats into LAX, JFK and MIA next summer. If this doesn’t kill them sustained pressure over the winter might. Not only do the network carriers have the F and J market to help cover costs, they have connecting traffic, which may help.
      The Norwegian fares look good and their service is regarded highly by those who have experienced it. I had hoped their premium cabin would be significantly cheaper than current prices. I felt that’s where they could have a real influence over the market. A glut of cheap Y seats with an overpriced premium Y is hardly revolutionary.
      EasyJet and Ryanair have been flying around Europe for well over a decade, Ryanair over two decades! Your figures demonstrate why, despite the talk, they haven’t ordered 50 787s each. You just can’t fly people across an ocean for £50 each. Someone has tried it every decade, all have ended up as footnotes in history.

    • mrtibbs1999 says:

      18 Oct18 October 16:41

      Great analysis Raffles. Would The numbers work from the republic or Belfast with 0 APD?

• Quark999 says:

  18 Oct18 October 15:53

  Yesterday evening, I managed to book one of these amazing deals to LAX on the inaugural flight on the 2nd of July (which I hope they will make sure somehow limbs off the runway), and returning on the 20th. I paid £438 return, which includes food, bag and importantly exit row seats in both directions.

  I know that this offer can’t last, and prices for the same combination are already up to £568 today. But I do think I got quite a bargain by booking early, and I have to say the charges (credit card surcharge of £4) are clearly laid out and not nearly as annoying as with Ryanair. Judging from my experience with Air Asia X, I actually prefer paying for drinks, but then also getting them exactly when I want them. I even got around 4£ in “CashPoints” for my booking. The only slight hiccup in the process was the fact that the website didn’t accept my UK postcode, as postcodes with letters in them are obviously the work of the devil…

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