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How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

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41–50 of 131 posts

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#41

I hate flying any cheap airline, at 2m tall I don't fit in typical sardine can seats at all. I always pay more to get a better seat, which I don't mind, but often cheap airlines don't even offer better seat pitch except on exit rows and unless you are lucky you can never count on getting one. Now that all airlines are getting into the cheap category, I fear eventually I can't fly at all.

I'm also around 2m and never had issues with leg room on Norwegian flights.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#42

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…

Stewart Airport, N.Y. seems like the poster child for third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times everywhere.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#43

"The U.S. Department of Transportation, besieged with opposition from domestic airlines, labor unions, and other interest groups, took three years to approve Norwegian’s transatlantic plan." This is the same government under Obama and Democrats that allowed for consolidation of United buying Continental and American buying US Air which resulted in less competition. The Democrats used to represent regular people inste…

For what it's worth, just because one party has a president in office, doesn't mean the other parties, businesses, and special interests stop trying to push their agendas. I think you've forgotten that.

What I know is that the Democratic Obama Justice Dept wrongly bowed to the special interests to weaken competition among domestic carriers (perhaps bowing to union interests which also want less competition so that they can get higher wages). It clearly was an anti-trust issue and yet they approved not one but two consolidations.

Consumers paid for these consolidations with higher fares and worse service.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You swipe your card below the entertainment system screen and order from there. Order what? Inflight videos?

Snacks, food, alcohol, etc. IIRC, inflight entertainment is free. Scheduled meal costs extra at time of ticket purchase. Much better to bring your own food, or buy their decent snacks as you get hungry.

Oh wow I've never been on a transatlantic flight with pay-for food but I think it makes sense. I don't know why people feel the need to eat so frequently on flights and it clauses chaos for everyone while it's being served if you are in economy.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#45

For anyone travelling to Europe from the bay area, you can't beat Norwegian. They have nonstop flights from OAK to Stockholm and Oslo on brand new 787's for as cheap as <$300 each way. It's another $50 to anywhere in Europe from those two cities on the budget lines like Ryanair.

Some details: - They fly out of Oakland airport, OAK, not San Francisco Airport. - They don't fly non-stop to Oslo, apparently. Itineraries to Oslo from OAK connect in London, Gatwick. - OAK LGW September 18th - 24th indeed $499 - OAK LGW July 3rd - 10th $1,189. So you'll still want to buy tickets well in advance.

OAK LGW on Norwegian during October was ~$650, which is about the same as Virgin Atlantic.

Some of the fare prices to Europe are very cheap, but not always.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#46
post #40
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…

Companies that have low costs and innovate during a downturn are always the ones to come out the strongest out of the downturn. By the time the big players "return to normal" in an upmarket, those innovators are already in a much better long term position to take them on.

This is definitely true although in Norwegian's case they also benefited from some lucky timing: the GFC happened to occur just as Boeing were developing new aircraft that would finally be capable of offering low enough ops costs for the LCC model to work on longer sector times. I doubt too that Norwegian foresaw how long oil prices would remain low when they made the order.

Norwegian are where they are today thanks to: execution, vision, luck and balls. Just like all the other hyper successful businesses of the world (Amazon, Ryanair, Southwest, Netflix etc. etc.).

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#47
post #26

I love flying Norwegian. I found a round-trip from Ft Lauderdale - Sweden for just $380 bucks in may but you have to be flexible around the dates. You just can't find prices like that with other carriers.

Check WOW Air, they offer even cheaper flight between Europe and USA

True, but as far as I've seen they always have to route through Iceland, correct? Norwegian fly direct form several big European cities. Also, how do their planes / in flight entertainment etc compare to Norwegian?

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#48

I Love flying with Norwegian. Painful to say as a swede but they are my go-to low price airline.

I mistook a Swedish neighbour for being Norwegian, afterwards I felt stupid for this as clearly I had not been paying attention. (Her name begins with 'N' so that may be the cause of the 'senior moment'.) As an English person living in England I have no idea whether getting someone's country 'almost right' is a hurtful thing. Is the Norwegian vs Swedish thing real? If so, is it for the reason I give - not paying atte…

It's like England/France, rather than Britain/Ireland.

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#49
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just shows that strikes aren't really a good tool in a dynamic economy where you can just spin up companies as necessary, and would need (increasingly complex) legislation to keep them relevant. The right political response should be to strengthen workers bargaining position---run the economy hot enough to turn the labour market into a sellers market, and keep enough social safety net that even just saying No wi…

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?

Re: How Norwegian Air Upended Travel With Its Cheap Flights

#50

I just leave those here in case you wonder how Norwegian works. They have brand new planes for efficiency on one hand but on the other, they screw their staff similar as to other budget airlines. https://www.quora.com/How-is-Norwegian-Air-so-cheap https://skift.com/2016/10/10/norwegian-air-accused-by-critic... "Norwegian’s modus operandi does raise interesting questions. Should a carrier established in one country be…

From the Quora article: "It's a relatively new airline, so it doesn't have a long history of union agreements that must be fulfilled. " All of the US domestic carriers went bankrupt and renegotiated their union agreements, so this doesn't hold.

They still have seniority rules.
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