Norse Atlantic launches Cape Town flights from Gatwick – but drops Caribbean routes
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Norse Atlantic has launched a new route from London Gatwick to Cape Town.
Flights will start on 28th October and operate three days per week, leaving London on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
This is the second new route for Norse in two months, following the announcement of Gatwick to Las Vegas flights last month. Las Vegas will launch on 12th September.
What is intriguing is that the return flight will be during the day.
The outbound leaves Gatwick at 8pm, landing in Cape Town at 9.30am. The return leaves at 11.45am, landing in London at 9.35pm.
Whilst this is the logical thing to do, British Airways leaves its aircraft on the ground for 9-10 hours in Cape Town. Despite the high cost of doing this (aircraft are expensive toys to have sitting around and not earning) it seems that the high paying business traveller market prefers it.
As Norse has no business class, it is potentially taking a gamble on its passengers preferring a day return flight rather than an overnight one where they will struggle to sleep. This model seems to work ok for Virgin Atlantic who also fly straight back.
There is also no overnight curfew at Gatwick, meaning that the aircraft could still operate if the departure from Cape Town was delayed by a couple of hours.
As with all Norse flights, you get a modern Boeing 787 aircraft and a two class cabin – economy and premium economy. The airline inherited Norwegian’s long haul fleet when the latter moved to being a purely short haul airline.
We rate Norse Premium highly. It has, by a huge margin, the most personal space of any competing premium economy seat. You can also see how Norse Atlantic’s premium economy compares to British Airways and Virgin Atlantic here.
Economy is, well, economy. The only problem is that Norse charges for literally everything, including meals, so the headline price (£499 return in this case, and £1,199 for Premium) is a long way from what you will end up spending.
You can read our review of flying Premium on Norse Atlantic from Gatwick to New York here.
PS. In the same week as announcing Cape Town, Norse Atlantic has quietly dropped its two Caribbean routes. Flights from Gatwick to Barbados and Montego Bay have been removed from sale.
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