Norwegian Air to offer US-Europe fares at US$65

Bloomberg

Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner has acquitted itself nicely in opening smaller destinations to nonstop international service. Think London-Austin, Texas, Tokyo-San Jose, California, and even Shanghai-Tijuana.
Norwegian Air International Ltd., no stranger to going where others won’t, is about to try this strategy with a new, smaller Boeing jet: the 737 Max. Norwegian, which has the honour of being the first airline to fly one, is using its first six of the planes to open 10 routes starting this summer. It will begin service June 15 from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Stewart International Airport, about 60 miles north of New York City.
To fill all these new trans-Atlantic seats, Norwegian is setting promotional fares to Europe at $65. The carrier will have “quite a few thousand seats for that specific fare,” Lars Sande, Norwegian’s senior vice president of sales, said in a telephone interview. The next fare level will be $99, rising from there.
Also in June, new flights from Edinburgh will arrive in Providence, R.I. and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., which serves Springfield, Mass. to the north and Hartford to the south. In July, Norwegian adds 737 Max flights to America from Irish cities such as Belfast, Cork, Dublin, and Shannon to Providence and Stewart. The Hartford service is only to Edinburgh, with three weekly summer flights and two during the winter.

Wanted—cheap Yankees
Norwegian is betting that Stewart is near enough to New York City and northern New Jersey to lure budget-minded travelers, while Providence and Hartford would draw suburban Bostonians and Connecticut residents. The airline has spent much of the past two years scouring the American Northeast to determine which airports would support trans-Atlantic service, both in terms of population and the economic incentives available to carriers.
“It’s a big catchment area that these three airports cover,” Sande said. “And all three airports are very efficient” in terms of their costs.
Norwegian’s forays into America have drawn intense opposition from U.S. airlines, pilots, and flight attendants, who accuse the carrier of establishing the Irish-based international subsidiary as a means of skirting Scandinavian labor and safety rules. In its statement announcing the routes, Norwegian said the new flights will be staffed mainly with U.S.-based crews from two new U.S. crew bases.

A blue water first for the 737
These new flights will also be the first trans-Atlantic flights to the U.S. on a 737; WestJet Airlines Ltd. flies several routes from Canada to Europe using the 737-700.
The 737 Max’s operating cost is about 8 percent lower than Boeing’s comparable models, with a range of 3,515 nautical miles. That means Norwegian may add flights from across western Europe to the U.S. East Coast. The airline may also deploy the new 737 on its lengthier European routes to the east, such as Dubai, Sande said. The range also means Norwegian doesn’t expect to remove some seats during winter, or stop for refueling, as some Boeing 757 operators have been forced to do because of winds.
From a passenger perspective, the 737 Max is not a radical departure from the thousands of 737s that airlines have been flying for years. This owes to carrier desires for fleet commonality and simplified crew training. Technically, the biggest advance is the Max line’s new CFM Leap-1B engine that is said to be about 15 percent more fuel efficient than the CFM56 used on older 737s.
Staying near land

Norwegian’s new Boeings won’t initially be certified for ETOPS operations, the regulatory designation for twin-engine aircraft specifying how long they can fly away from land. This means Norwegian’s summer flights will be routed closer to potential diversion spots.
By winter, when the airline expects its 737 Max fleet to have ETOPS capability, the trans-Atlantic flights will become about 30 minutes shorter as dispatchers will be able to route them more optimally, Sande said.
Boeing’s three current 737 NG (Next Generation) models are ETOPS rated for 180-minute flight from land, as is Airbus Group SE’s A320 family, owing to the extreme reliability of modern turbofan jet engines. In 2014, European regulators granted Airbus an ETOPS rating of 370 minutes for the A350. Boeing’s 787 and 777 models are 330 minutes.
Boeing’s 737 Max flight testing is expected to conclude soon, with regulatory certification coming after that, company spokesman Doug Alder Jr. said in an email. Norwegian has firm orders for 100 of the 737 Max and has said previously it expects to take delivery of the first one in May. The carrier’s 737 Max will have 189 seats, the same as its 737-800s. It also has 20 twin-aisle 787-9s on order, along with Airbus A321neos.