Norwegian Air CEO Bjørn Kjos says the plan is an attempt to take a few of the market share from other carriers that dominate the trans-Atlantic airline market.
Advertisement
Europe’s largest budget airline, Ryanair, said in March it planned to offer cheap flights to Europe by 2020. Kjos said he was confident this can be arranged.
Average prices on such routes are likely to be closer to $300 round trip, Mr Kjos said. USA airlines and labor unions have lobbied against the permit, saying Norwegian is using Ireland as a “flag of convenience” to skirt Norwegian and US labor laws.
While airlines such as Deutsche Lufthansa AG offer travelers hundreds of destinations via connections in airport hubs, Norwegian is aiming to make nonstop service to small cities that straddle the Atlantic more common, which keeps costs low. The budget airline claims that by 2017, they would be able to cut costs to a point that a one-way flight could cost as little as $69 to cross the Atlantic.
To cope with the proposal, Mr Kjos’s company has ordered 100 Boeing 737 MAX jets, with the first five expected to arrive in 2017. Lufthansa’s low-priced subsidiary Eurowings is also starting cheap long-haul flights.
The planes are equipped to cruise over the Atlantic but are smaller than most jets which now make the journey, making them a better size for smaller airports such as Birmingham. Norwegian Air says the plane will be a better option for transatlantic flights that will land in smaller airports, such as Birmingham in Britain.
“European consumers want lower cost travel to the United States of America and the same for Americans coming to Europe”, said Robin Kiely, head of Ryanair communications, to CNN Money.
Europe’s third-largest budget airline was considering flights to Edinburgh, in Scotland and Bergen, in Norway from USA airports with little or no current worldwide service, such as New York’s Westchester county airport and Connecticut’s Bradley global airport, Kjos said.
Advertisement
Regulators would have to agree to set up customs stations at USA regional airports to handle worldwide traffic. Iceland’s Wow Air offers low cost flights on Boston to Paris route for $99 and Eurowings is also planning to start cheap intercontinental flights.
