The marketing works well for the London market, but even here brand awareness for Med routes is low not helped by the fact that non are yet released for summer 18 by which time Jet2 will no doubt have summer 19 on sale.

The US ops on the max seems to have settled down nicely, gather new routes to be announced within the next few weeks.

Barcelona and Tenerife are loaded from EDI. And Malaga from LGW. Which suggests that is all.

4-5 short haul routes are being axed from Gatwick to provide slots to increase long haul for summer 18.

Buster - what short haul routes are Norwegian cutting from Gatwick ? I've had a look at Norwegian's website - it seems as if for June 2018 while Gatwick-Nordics has been published, almost nothing between Gatwick and southern Europe has gone on sale yet

It's mainly the southern Europe services which are being cut - if not a complete withdrawal, then a hugely reduced service. I think for example Tenerife is going from 6x per week to 3.

I read it on the news wires, but didn't really take a lot of notice apart from that they will hardly be competing with easyJet now there is a feeder agreement in place.

If their current offering is to be the final program for 2018, it looks like going down to around 4-5 aircraft at Gatwick, down from 10. The two lines of flying for TUI have gone too.

Quite a reduction, especially given that they've just offered most of their LGW-based cabin crew permanent contracts.

It would also suggest a lot of slots have suddenly become available for lease/purchase in addition to the Monarch slots.
I doubt Norwegian will be happy to surrender Gatwick slots for free

Me thinks you are getting ahead of youselves on this re next summer.

With the planned aircraft deliveries for 2018 and pilot recruitment plans announced internally added to permanent contract to this years summer cabin crew and new pilots allocated LGW, then I think there is a lot more to come, Norwegian are seeking more slots, not giving them up, the route portfolio will change not retract is the word and the planning.

davidjohnson6
 

Your figure of 10 aircraft is that for the B737 short-haul fleet?

Quick question................. flying from CPH-LGW in 2 weeks time after spending a few days in Sweden and training it to CPH for a few days.

When does online checkin open for this as slightly confusing.

Cheers and try as i might I couldn't find it :ugh:

Spotty M, it was my figure and yes that's for short haul based at Gatwick. This number includes one operating for NUK (G-NRWY), one spare and three aircraft that nightstop in OSL/ARN/CPH every night except Saturday, operated by LGW crew. Next Summer, from what I can see, is currently down to just CPH, ARN, OSL, TRD and AAL, plus AGP operated by AGP crew. The rest is DY.

I hope there's more to come

Vokes55
 

Thanks for that info, l make it 15 a/c are currently operating as based in LGW which includes all the various Norwegian operations of short and long-haul.

My thought is that if we assume Norwegian's short haul network at Gatwick to southern Europe really is being slashed then a lot of slots suddenly become available for alternate use

Why? It makes far more sense for them to use the slots to fly to places the world and his uncle don't fly to!

Huge costs in opening a new short haul market, delayed revenue stream, associated marketing budget and no guarantee of profits if niche.

DavidJohnson6 - The slots will be used to aid LH expansion. Lots of increases to daily and 2x daily JFK retained - I think LAX, OAK, BOS, JFK will all be at least daily.

Norwegian closes BHX

New blow for Birmingham as Norwegian scraps all flights from the city to Spain

I have never seen this kind of thing, closing routes 4 days before departure alluding to poor performance ???

Norwegian came from nowhere and built up sun routes out of the UK, explicitly building up D8 on Irish registered aircraft to accomplish this. We see short haul profits and massive long haul losses and start up costs with the strategy now being downsize the short haul operation in favour of the more challenging long haul?

What are we missing here?

Are LGW slots not time of day specific? So the first wave departures and evening arrivals go back into the pot or are reshuffled?

They haven’t been bookable past this weekend for months; all the Manchester-Spain routes come to and end this weekend too.

I understand its Nordics will be reshuffled, with LH taking a larger slice.

Regarding switch from SH to LH - they believe they can get a higher yield on LH in the long run. Apparently doing really well from Gatwick, but want to eek out more if they can.

Fair point but they were talking about feeding long haul with short haul. There's a load of smoke and mirrors here, it reminds me of Air Europe in a few ways.

It seems EDI is privileged. We have Tenerife right through W17/S18, and BCN returns for S18. Lost Malaga, though.

Norwegian today reported its third quarter results for 2017. The net result was 1 billion NOK, an improvement of 4 percent compared to the same quarter previous year. The load factor increased to 92 percent. The passenger development has been positive in all of Norwegian’s key markets, with a significant growth in the U.S. and Spain.

I haven’t yet read the full report but wet leases certainly cost them dearly.

Malaga & Madrid now in booking system for summer 18 ex LGW

BCN now in the booking system from LGW for summer 2018, so i guess more routes will be added over next few days/weeks

Looking at the CAA stats the narrowbody transatlantic regional routes towards end of summer timetable dont make great reading. Is this still too early to judge or are these routes genuinely sustainable - looks like average for some only half or less full. With the low cost model id have thought youd need bums on seats

Heard that LGW is going to get an additional LH route to be announced in the new few weeks, and an additional MAX route (non-LGW).

Point 2 point SWF can be much quicker to downtown than JFK with the stage coach bus that meets inbound aircraft.

The problem from my perspective is two fold, firstly you can’t really go westbound with a full load and even when the aircraft get sat com to allow CPDLC they will still be too heavy to get much above 360, so you have to cap the load.

I think it would be worth taking say 5 or 6 rows out ( loss of 36 seats) and put 2 rows of business class seats restoring 8 seats so a net loss of 28 taking the seating down to 161

The only problem is that on some routes the aircraft do a quick Scandinavia trip between US flights and they tend to be full.

are they operating a short haul programme in summer 18 or winter 18 from LGW ?

Have you looked at their website?

You need to include the significant added weight of business class seats too.

Impressive performance of the B38M on their winter operations, showing the power of the jetstream.

2 days ago:

PVD-SNN, block of 4:52
SNN-PVD, block of 7:30

I see EDI-BDL taking over 7:45 routinely. Latter stages of the flight show a groundspeed of only 250 knots, with up to 625 knots on return. Crazy!

After recently taking a BDL-EDI flight, it was definitely adequate for the journey, and I'd definitely fly a 737 across the Atlantic again.

Yet more expansion with transatlantic flights from Amsterdam, Madrid and Milan:

Newsdesk - Norwegian

Was surprised to see Scandinavian DY flights to BOS now scrapped for S18... whats going on there? BOS often seen as a 'weak' market but not as much as some of those secondary US routes..

Many of the secondary US airports flights are unsurprisingly full this next week and loads are in general improving, I guess it takes time to build the traffic and this is reflected in the prices. Norwegian on board product is superior to the likes of easy,FR & wow, but for 7 hour flights it need to further improve IFE to seat back and a premium section would help, there is only so long you can watch Mr Bean mini movies on an overhead screen !!

they are increasing the number of premium seats on the Dreamliner I gather

I thought Norwegian had free inflight WiFi to negate the need for seat back IFE?

I thought some of the Oct/Nov stats suggested the secondary US loads were worse rather than improving?

Not sure how we deduce that given we cannot make a like for like comparison with the same month last year as the flights only started in June this year.

It is pretty obvious however that October/November loads would be less than summer loads though. If the loads have picked up again in December then great but we will only see if things are improving or not if we can make like for like comparisons.

I would imagine that DY will appreciate that these routes will take some time to grow given the nature of them. I still speak to people now who have no idea they exist which is a shame as there is so much untapped demand there who may well jump at the chance to fly from UK to US and back for under £200.

Not fitted on the 737 Max until they get their first C checks.