The rapid expansion of Norwegian continues in 2018 with Chicago, Austin and Buenos Aires announced as new destinations for the growing low-cost airline — as well as increased frequencies of flights to Boston, Los Angeles and Oakland.
Norwegian Poised For Largest Expansion Yet in 2018 — Including New South America Route
Additionally, a new enhanced premium class cabin will be introduced this year; and access to Wi-Fi will be available during long-haul flights. Norwegian is currently the only airline to offer free inflight Wi-Fi on flights between the United Kingdom and greater than 30 destinations in Europe.
Already the third-largest low-cost carrier in Europe as a result of launching a minimum of 15 routes last year and transporting 5.8 million passengers from the United Kingdom and Ireland to greater than 50 destinations worldwide, Norwegian revealed the details of its new long-haul routes.
New Service to Buenos Aires
New direct service between London Gatwick Airport and Buenos Aires is expected to launch on Wednesday, February 14, 2018 as the first flight route to South America for Norwegian.
The frequency of flights will be four times per week using Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” aircraft.
Fares are expected to start at £299.00 each way.
New Service to Chicago
Daily flights between London Gatwick Airport and Chicago is expected to launch on Sunday, March 25, 2018.
Fares are expected to start at £149.90 each way.
New Service to Austin
New direct service between London Gatwick Airport and Austin is expected to launch on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 and operate at a frequency of three times per week.
Fares are expected to start at £164.90 each way.
Increased Service to Boston, Oakland and Los Angeles
Service to Boston will increase from five weekly flights to a daily service, with fares starting from £134.90 each way.
Moreover, plans are underway to increase service to Oakland to a daily service; and additional flights are planned to Los Angeles, with departures twice per day on select days of the week.
The increase in frequencies of service are expected to occur during the spring of 2018. Click here for the latest news and updates on flights operated by Norwegian.
New Enhanced Premium Class Cabin
Norwegian will introduce an expanded Premium cabin which will have 60% more seats for passengers wanting an enhanced experience. The new 56 seat cabin configuration will offer passengers more than a metre of legroom and 11” Panasonic monitors providing hours of complimentary inflight entertainment. The new cabin will be fitted on Norwegian’s final 20 787 Dreamliner orders set for delivery from February onwards.
Access to Wi-Fi on Long-Haul Routes
Norwegian will add 11 Boeing 787 Dreamliners to its fleet in 2018 which are exclusively used on long-haul routes from Gatwick. 10 of these new aircraft will feature the enhanced Premium cabin. Meanwhile 12 new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft will land in Norwegian’s fleet this year to service the carrier’s great value transatlantic flights from Edinburgh, Belfast and Ireland to the US east coast. Later in 2018, Norwegian will begin to rollout inflight Wi-Fi on long-haul routes that will keep passengers connected in the skies.
Inside Take
The new routes are in addition to others which have already been announced to launch in 2018 — including three new transatlantic routes from the United States to Milan and Madrid; as well as direct service between New York and Amsterdam.
All prices of fares are based on the lowest available fare per person — which can be found using this low fare calendar — and include all mandatory taxes, charges and fees. Seats are subject to availability.
The rapid expansion of Norwegian is not without controversy, as strong opposition to the growth of the airline back in 2016 was due to concerns pertaining to the low-cost carrier having an unfair advantage over airlines based in the United States — but that was before the concept of Basic Economy airfares was to be considered for international flights, as will be the case with Singapore Airlines and the introduction of its Economy Lite product later this month.
Additionally, investors are concerned that the airline is growing too rapidly. “The fast-growing group has become a disruptive force within the European airline industry over the past few years, leading the charge in bringing down the cost of long-haul flying and forcing rivals to respond with their own budget services”, according to this article written by Tanya Powley and Richard Milne for Financial Times. “The speed of its expansion is putting pressure on costs. Analysts point to a poor summer, with Norwegian reporting a 6 per cent rise in unit costs for the third quarter. That followed a dismal second-quarter cost performance, with an operating loss of NKr863m ($104m).”
Still, Norwegian is willing to take risks in tapping into a market which its management believes it can dominate and win: by offering lower airfares on transatlantic routes while simultaneously putting pricing pressure on competing airlines — and at this time, the passengers appear to be the winners as a result of this strategy.
Source: Norwegian Air Shuttle.
