GATWICK

[True Blue]

Norwegian @ Lgw

Since the announcement by DY of their new base at Lgw, many have speculated that it would be the next EI, a failure. I have been keeping a watch on how they might be doing at Lgw and have come to an opinion that they might be handling things better than EI did. At this stage I must state I have no knowlege of their ops or most importantly, yields. My reasons are:
1. They already had a reasonably large operation at Lgw from Scandanavia. That will have been already driving a lot of traffic to their sites.
2. They increased frequency to Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Many of those flights, especially to Stockholm, are regularly sold out. I would not be surprised if they increased Stockholm further in the future. This will be giving the Lgw base a foundation that EI was never able to do.
3. Looking at the new routes, on several of those routes, flights are often sold out. For this month, Malaga, Barcelona and Nice are very good examples of that. So pax travelling to those destinations are finding DY as an option. I fully understand that they may have offered very keen fares to drive traffic.
4. DY, unlike EI, has not gone for multiple daily flights to the new destinations. They have gone for 3/4 flights a week, which seems to be working. This will limit losses but allow them to build frequency in the future as brand awareness increases.
5. I wondered if the public would think of DY as an option when going to the med, but they seem to be doing so in good numbers. This would have been their biggest challenge.
6. In a capitalist economy, there will always be new entrants coming in at the bottom, starting small but growing and eventually posing a challenge to the bigger/older operators. For that reason, it might be best not to write them off too quick as at some point, both Lgw and a new entrant there may effect a change that will effect other airlines and us.

Does anyone have close knowledge of how they are doing?

TB