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How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

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Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#61

Post by _acme »

valuearb wrote: post #49
alkonaut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ensure that authorities are powerful enough to just make swift decisions about things like this. "Since this move accomplishes exactly the curcumvention of the strike, we consider the new company bound by the old company's agreements. Oblige by Monday or stop flying in Norway".

Why can't the company just fire the strikers and directly hire replacements?

In the US, this is often possible (see the Air Traffic Controllers situation), but I think in many countries in Europe, it's not always legal.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#62

Post by oliv__ »

alkonaut wrote: post #28

Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines. They don't use shady UI patterns (or ads!) on their website. They don't walk around the aisle selling lottery tickets. And they don't land on third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times to cities. Basically they work like a full service airline, but of course they only work from A to B and don't offer the fancy guarantees you need with more complicated b…

Yeah I've had great experiences with them every time. Felt just like flying a full service airline except with way lower fares.

I was on their first flight from NYC to Paris and they even had a mini celebration free "buffet" with snacks and gave out business class seats to the first ~ten people to have booked their seat on that flight!

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#63

Post by davidf18 »

zimzam wrote: post #52
davidf18 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Should a carrier established in one country be allowed to offer wages typical of another?" The chief concern is safety. America's airline industry especially with the consolidations of United buying Continental and American buying US Airways is dysfunctional. We have no equivalent of Ryan Air or EasyJet in the US and we should. US domestic carriers should strive to compete with Norwegian offering their prices and st…

We do have low-cost carriers like Spirit & Frontier airlines. I know somebody who was in a long-distance Washington DC - Florida relationship and was able to get $20-$40 round-trip flights for weekend trips pretty regularly.

Well from NYC, both of the airlines fly out of LGA and Spirit also out of Newark, but I've never, never seen fares anything that are better than the other carriers that I get through Kayak or other sites. Never.

NYC SFO July 11 to 20 RT is about $330 to $350 on Spirit, Frontier, and Kayak (with better carriers).

They are not comparable to EasyJet and Ryan Air which does offer substantially lower fares.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#64

Post by bogomipz »

corford wrote: post #7

Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's). Anti-cycle is the cheapest time to buy lots of new planes (if you have the balls and investor backing to do it). Underneath it all is the same operating model that allowed low c…

>"Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's)."

This doesn't sound quite right. Starting an airline is not a trivial undertaking, certainly not something you could hope to complete during a temporary downturn or use "market timing" like you would with equities.

Norwegian along with most other budget carriers leases their planes. This gives them certain advantages. This model allows them to always be taking advantage of most fuel efficient planes and phase out less efficient parts of their fleet much quicker[1]. Also the lessor absorbs much of the maintenance costs on the leased planes where's bigger companies that buy fleet outright have to assume that costs themselves often with union labor.

In fact Norwegian is also now in the business of leasing planes to other budgets carriers[2].

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airlines-leasing-orders-id...

[2] http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/airlineroute/271604/norw...

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#65

Post by davidf18 »

_acme wrote: post #60
davidf18 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "At what expense of high paying, quality, American jobs?" When I fly to Israel with a layover in Istanbul to visit friends in Istanbul, I am using Turkish pilots, thus depriving Americans of jobs. They are lower cost than many European pilots. Are you saying I shouldn't be flying Turkish Air? I don't understand? Incidentally, the flights from NYC to Istanbul use very modern planes and are staffed with very friendly…

How would you "encourage US domestic carriers to change the way they operate so that they can match the Norwegian fares while retaining American jobs." I think the point is that that is impossible.

I don't agree. The consolidation of major carriers under Obama administration (United buying Continental, and American buying US Air) has reduced competition and thus higher fares, worse service.

They don't fly out of regional airports at least in NYC I think that is rare.

I"ll bet there are a lot of operational issues.

Delta, United and others own low-cost carriers (the famous United case where the senior was dragged off the plane screaming and kicking was not on United but a low cost fully owned subsidiary carrier of United) as it is, so they could have a low-cost carrier that travels to Europe. These low-cost wholly owned carriers are domestic only.

But none of them have them because they want to cannibalize the higher fares charged. They enjoy their margins.

Norwegian (like Amazon, like Uber) is in a contest to capture market share and thus may be willing to operate on thin margins or even take a short term loss to capture share. The major American carriers may not want to invest the money to retain share and prefer to use politics instead.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#66

Post by jk2323 »

corford wrote: post #7

Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's). Anti-cycle is the cheapest time to buy lots of new planes (if you have the balls and investor backing to do it). Underneath it all is the same operating model that allowed low c…

You are right but miss some things: 1. Planes are easier to clean 2. Even the Emergency board card can't get stolen (Printed on the chair) 3. Can't buy tickets on other websites 4. Point to point airline, luggage does not have to get transferred, no missed connection flights.

One of the biggest advantages are the short breaks. Sometimes they even don't turn off the turbines before they fly back. I am skeptical if Norwegian can copy all this to long distance.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#67

Post by jk2323 »

alkonaut wrote: post #28

Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines. They don't use shady UI patterns (or ads!) on their website. They don't walk around the aisle selling lottery tickets. And they don't land on third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times to cities. Basically they work like a full service airline, but of course they only work from A to B and don't offer the fancy guarantees you need with more complicated b…

"Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines."

I saw a thread were pilots were freaked out by this: http://avherald.com/h?article=4a1ae8c4

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#68

Post by phil21 »

gambiting wrote: post #53
alkonaut wrote: post #28

Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines. They don't use shady UI patterns (or ads!) on their website. They don't walk around the aisle selling lottery tickets. And they don't land on third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times to cities. Basically they work like a full service airline, but of course they only work from A to B and don't offer the fancy guarantees you need with more complicated b…

But then what do you do if only Ryanair flies remotely close to where you need to be? Every time I go home I could either fly ryanair and be home in about 3 hours, or fly with someone else + take the train, total journey time = 9-10 hours. Free market competition is great if there actually is any competition.

The only way I'd take a LCC into an "alternate airport" would be if I lived closer to the alternate than major.

For someone like you who is commuting home, it makes a ton of sense. For typical business/leisure travel it rarely is convenient, and like many folks I'm astounded at the level of inconvenience people will go through to save $50 on a flight.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#69

Post by wbl »

gsnedders wrote: post #39
alkonaut wrote: post #28

Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines. They don't use shady UI patterns (or ads!) on their website. They don't walk around the aisle selling lottery tickets. And they don't land on third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times to cities. Basically they work like a full service airline, but of course they only work from A to B and don't offer the fancy guarantees you need with more complicated b…

Note that some of their upcoming long haul stuff is to obscure airports: their new flights from Edinburgh are to "Providence/Boston T. F. Green Airport" which is an hour+ away from Boston. (Well, it's a totally reasonable airport for Providence, but marketing it as Boston is dubious!)

You can hop on a train to South Station. Granted you can do that from Newark, but it is a cheap train (only during the week because America). So not as convenient as Logan, but definitely comparable to SFO/Oakland.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#70

Post by corford »

jk2323 wrote: post #66
corford wrote: post #7

Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's). Anti-cycle is the cheapest time to buy lots of new planes (if you have the balls and investor backing to do it). Underneath it all is the same operating model that allowed low c…

You are right but miss some things: 1. Planes are easier to clean 2. Even the Emergency board card can't get stolen (Printed on the chair) 3. Can't buy tickets on other websites 4. Point to point airline, luggage does not have to get transferred, no missed connection flights. One of the biggest advantages are the short breaks. Sometimes they even don't turn off the turbines before they fly back. I am skeptical if Nor…

I too am sceptical the pure LCC model will work for extended long haul routes but I think it can definitely work for medium-haul (i.e. Western Europe to Eastern/Central US). I think the legacy carriers will also have an easier time catching up to Norwegian's prices in the medium-haul space since the distances involved restrict how creative you can be to get costs down (compared to the short-haul market) i.e. there's a limit to how cheap Norwegian can make it.
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