Norwegian Air Shuttle
 

Started a new thread so that LGW thread does not drift, trust this is ok with Pprune police.


The Norwegian low-cost airline Norwegian opens next year its international showdown on long haul flights . The company will fly to three U.S. destinations from London Gatwick Airport.

The current problems with Dreamliner aircraft has not been Norwegian to lose heart or adjust ambitions . The Norwegian low-cost airline begins for next summer an international focus on long-haul routes by establishing three North American routes from London Gatwick airport.

According Airlines Routes there will be flights to New York JFK, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale from the UK's major airports .



Norwegian seems to be alone on all three routes , as there are currently other airlines to compete with the three North American destinations . All the routes to be flown with the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner .

Or an old :mad:-heap drafted in whilst the plastic fantastic is AOG!

Will be interesting to see the big boys reaction.

Wonder what BA and VS will do ?

BA will have a slot available at LAX as they are dropping a LHR rotation by using 2x A380 instead of 3x 744

They're not alone on London-New York or London - Los Angeles.
Mind you, no one has tried this sort of thing since BCAL were flying B707s on ABC Charters. If their cost base is crushingly low it might work, they're only chasing tourists with this schedule, though with BA flying the A380 on LHR-LAX, I am not sure a LGW service brings much else to the table, although the route did well for Laker on a similar schedule, but with a much less competitive environment.

BA and VS both offer a good service from LHR, and I don't see this stealing too many of their premium passengers, so I don't expect much of a response. BA might review a LGW-FLL option but beyond that LGW-JFK/LAX don't work as well as LHR so why bother when chasing market share down the back.

It's something new that's for sure....

When Maxjet and Eos tried this at Stansted America Airlines came straight back to Stansted even though American had very good loads as soon as they killed off Maxjet and Eos American pulled out of Stansted ... Bully boys will jump in but good luck to Norwegian :D .

EOS and Maxjet were daily and aimed at the pointy end. The JFK service appears to be aimed at shoppers and holiday makers, and that *might* just work.

Norwegian is being cute about this. Take Lax for example, not that much capacity. Bet they steadily increase it though. What would BA/VS do now , divert capacity from Lhr to counter 2 flights a week? By the time they think they should react to Norwegian, it will be too late. Norwegian will be established. And I think there will be enough people who prefer Lgw to make these services viable as they build up. Remember, with capitalism, there will always be some small guy coming in at the bottom who eventually takes the big guy out. Remember where FR and EZY started. Many big players find it hard to keep on the right path, one small bad decision can eventually cause all sorts of trouble. Banking?

Be interesting to see when NAS intend to start making some money!

If I was an investor in Norwegian I would bail out now. Low frequency long haul services on routes dominated by big airlines are a formula for suicide.

I was only very young when Laker flew so I dont remember what they did.
And cant recall Virgins Early days.
Perhaps someone could fill me in .
However If Norweigian or even Dare I say Ryanair could do ultra loco in relation to current pricing.
Perhaps theres something in it.
Also Ryanair might even make it work from Lesser Airports like Newcastle for example to New York.
And if it works I wonder what the airline industry in terms of players will be left if this idea takes off.

would you say VS is in a seriously strong position for a fight? Will DL want to pour lots of money down a hole, how strong are they? BA with lots of issues in Spain of their own , under the IAG umbrella. It's just not a case of others rolling up to see NAX off, others have issues to deal with as they confront a changing world. BA took their eye off the ball and let standards slip, hard to recover from that.

Then take a look at the fare level on existing long-haul DY routes between Scandinavia and BKK. Add food charges, luggage fees... Nothing revolutionary indeed.

Why would anyone choose Norwegian over BA or Virgin?

When I last went to New York, we chose the carrier that allowed half the party to connect in from 3 different regional UK airports and chose our departure time from Heathrow to coincide with the London contingent having time to make Heathrow after work. We also got to choose our return flight to coincide with what we were doing on our last day over in New York.

So why would we choose an airline that'll fly only two or three times a week, rather than once an hour, everyday? It would have to come down to price, and how can a fare subsidised by a premium cabin ever be beaten by an all low cost cabin?

It's a triple fail;

1. No one has made low cost long haul work yet

2. The market has already spoken, overwhelmingly, in favour of LHR to USA

3. The big players have a proven track record of doing everything they can to stop new entrants entering the transatlantic market

What do Norwegian know that we don't?

pee, did you see the prices to BKK before DY started to fly? Thai has dropped the prices considerably to try to hold on to their passengers - and SAS has bailed out this summer season and will try to restart CPH-BKK 3x weekly from late November.

I suggest we change the we above to I, then the question could easily be answered with:
You Artie are not among the customers Norwegian is trying to attract.

Because it hasn't worked for BA and VS doesn't necessarily lead to it not working for others. Large part of the aviation industry is conservative, too conservative will many say - and it is this "many" Norwegian is targeting.

OK, fair point.

But who is it Norwegian want to attract and how are they going to do it? What's the USP that'll make people choose them?

Genuine question.

It's conservative because margins are often thin, lots of airlines have gone bust and survivorship bias has tended to favour the airlines which were conservative over the multi-year business cycle and didn't overexpand

Exactly who would you say they're going after on a thrice weekly JFK run? There are around 29 flights each day from LHR-NYC, none of which require anyone to pony up cash for service when you sit down. Given the fares down the back are already very competitive, a lot of us genuinely want to know what Norwegian are thinking here? Who's this aimed at?
No one with a loyalty card for sure. LGW-FLL is P2P leisure but JFK / LAX is baffling.

Artie Fufkin - Surely the market they are going for is those within a local catchment area travelling for leisure. So the USP is convenience and avoiding LHR. As has been pointed out, fares aren't that competitive compared with the majors. So I guess success will come from there being enough passengers falling into that category.

I would bet further expansion would come from new routes at similar frequency rather than ramping up existing routes. The one thing that I think all past failures has had in common is daily flights, and it is the higher capacity and attractiveness to business travellers that goes with such frequency that has attracted the attention of majors and caused reactions.

You can get a return ticket to LAX from LGW for as low as £439 and then it includes the Plus package (meals, 1 checked in bag and reserved seat). As a comparison, BA want £959 for the same return ticket.

The new trend is to spend as little as possible on flying to a destination, and use the money you have saved for a better hotel, better rental car, better entertainment and/or visting better restaurants.