As promised, Norwegian Air has announced dirt- cheap fares across the Atlantic on flights launching this summer out of less-traveled airports in the Northeast to points in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. But if you want to snag a deal, you’ll have to act fact: tickets priced at $65 one-way (taxes included) are now on sale, and as is usual with these teaser deals, the supply will be limited.
That said, even after the introductory tickets sell out, the going rate for the remaining seats will be around $99 one way, according to Lars Sande, Norwegian’s senior vice president of sales. “Flying to Europe has been too expensive for too long," he tells Condé Nast Traveler. “This gives people the opportunity to fly there for a really affordable price.” (Note: Norwegian Air, like other budget upstarts, follows an à la carte pricing model, so things like checked bags, advance seat assignments, and meals are extra.)
In all, the airline is launching ten new routes from three U.S. airports not normally associated with transatlantic air travel: Stewart International, about 60 miles north of New York City in the Hudson Valley city of Newburgh, New York; T.F. Green in Providence, Rhode Island; and Bradley International in Hartford, Connecticut. Stewart, in particular, is an underutilized resource: while it has long runways capable of handling aircraft of any size, due to its status as a former military airfield, its relative obscurity and lack of direct public transportation to the Big Apple have hindered growth.
What these airports have in common, says Sande, is that they’re less congested than large international hubs like New York JFK, and thus have lower costs and more available landing slots—all of which can help keep costs down. The new routes will be operated by Norwegian Air International, Norwegian's Irish subsidiary, which finally won approval from the U.S. government in December 2016 to expand their services.
But the true secret sauce is the jets that will make this possible: the brand-new Boeing 737 MAX, a long-range version of the familiar single-aisle plane, a workhorse that is more typically found on domestic routes. It will be configured to carry 189 passengers in a single-class layout—155 fewer than on the airline's Boeing 787-9s—and is capable of flying nonstop for up to 3,500 miles, versus a range of 2,500 miles on U.S. routes like Los Angeles to New York. The carrier is taking delivery of six of these jets this year, but that’s just the first installment of what Sande described as a “huge order” of several hundred of the Boeing aircraft.
“This will allow us to fly into smaller airports, and will allow for more efficiency” in operations, Sande says. Down the line, it could potentially fly into airfields such as Long Island’s MacArthur Airport—good news for those hoping to avoid the snarl of construction and renovations at both LaGuardia and JFK.
Here, the timetable for the rollout of the new flights:
Edinburgh, Scotland will be the first city to get the new service from the U.S., with daily flights starting from Stewart on June 15; four times a week from Providence on June 16; and thrice weekly service from Hartford on June 17. Service frequencies on all routes will be reduced in the winter season.
This rollout will be followed by daily flights to Dublin and thrice weekly flights to Belfast, Northern Ireland out of Stewart on July 1, and flights to both cities from Providence launching the next day, five times a week and twice weekly, respectively.
Service to Shannon, Ireland from both Stewart and providence will also start the first week of July, with several fights a week, and Norwegian will also launch a year-round flight between Providence and Cork, Ireland around the same time, starting with three flights a week in the summer, dropping to twice-weekly in the off-season.
With the addition of these routes, Norwegian now offers 55 routes from the U.S.; 48 to Europe and seven to the French Caribbean. Other upcoming 2017 launches from the U.S. to keep an eye on? Oakland/San Francisco to Copenhagen (March 28); Los Angeles to Barcelona (June 5); New York/Newark to Barcelona (June 6); Oakland/San Francisco to Barcelona (June 7); Orlando to Paris (July 31); and Fort Lauderdale to Barcelona (August 22).