
Norwegian Air Shuttle to offer $69 Transatlantic flights - martinald
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2016/12/07/norwegian-air-low-cost-carrier-newburgh-stewart-airport-portsmouth-providence-portsmouth-737-max-base/95085448/
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erokar
I am Norwegian and I have stopped flying with this airline because of safety
concerns. They are cutting costs everywhere, and they are leasing cheap flight
crew who are not up to par.

Discussion of recent incident in Norway on a professional pilot's forum:
[http://www.pprune.org/rumours-
news/587827-norwegian-b738-kri...](http://www.pprune.org/rumours-
news/587827-norwegian-b738-kristiansand-04-nov-2016-a.html)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The flights must be incredibly uncomfortable. They are packing many more
passengers into their planes[1]. E.g. that article linked to a previous one
where Norwegian Air was unable to fly into Vegas during the summer, because
their heavy planes couldn't legally take off in hot weather.

[1] _Norwegian packs 291 seats on to its Boeing 787 -8 models and 344 on to
its bigger 787-9s. By comparison, United 's 787-8 and 787-9 Dreamliner models
seat 219 and 252 passengers, respectively._
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2016/11/17/too-
hot-fly-norwegian-air-suspends-summer-las-vegas-flights/94025902/)

~~~
lucaspiller
The seats in economy are the same size (ok United is 0.1 inch wider), but
Norwegian only fly two-class and their premium section is smaller.

[https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/United_Airlines/United_Air...](https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/United_Airlines/United_Airlines_Boeing_787-800.php)

[https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Norwegian_Air_Shuttle/Norw...](https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Norwegian_Air_Shuttle/Norwegian_Air_Shuttle_Boeing_787-8.php)

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CPLX
Stewart Airport is surprisingly awesome, it has a decent terminal, and some of
the most impressive runways ever, as it is a training Air Force base for
C-17's and was an alternate landing option for the space shuttle back in the
day.

With that said it is a place that historically interesting airline ideas have
gone to die. It's not really accessible via transit, and despite being sort of
kind of close to NYC, it's in the direction that has the least population
density and lowest income. Every time interesting service has been announced
there it seems to be quietly discontinued not too long thereafter. Maybe this
time will be different but I am skeptical of their ability to break the curse.

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2bluesc
> These are the routes that will launch with $69 fares and have average
> (round-trip) fares of $300 (to) $350, including taxes.

The $69 number is only a launch promotion it seems.

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Turing_Machine
$300 r/t is still damned cheap.

~~~
gargarplex
Agreed. And, fwiw, I've found cheaper flights booking the same leg through
[https://www.norwegian.se](https://www.norwegian.se) as opposed to
[https://www.norwegian.com/en/](https://www.norwegian.com/en/)

~~~
cwt137
Make sure prices are quoted in the same currency when comparing websites.

~~~
gargarplex
The price offered on .se was totally different and much lower after exchange
rate conversion; .se was quoted and charged in SEK(kr) as opposed to the .com,
quoted and charged in USD($). My browser was connecting from USA without VPN,
heh.

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peteretep
The article implies that using a narrow body keeps costs low, which seems
unlikely, and then later contradicts it and says that cost per passenger is
higher on a narrow body, which seems likely. Any explanation? Does the 737MAX
have some additional secret sauce over a 787/A350?

~~~
notahacker
Nope. I mean, it has latest generation engines which are a significant fuel
efficiency improvement on the engines on older 737s (which is what Norwegian
were drawing their attention to in the original announcement about the MAX
making these routes viable, since their MAXes aren't delivered yet) but so do
the 787/A350. Similarly, for older generation engines transatlantic crossings
are right on the limit of narrowbodies' range, which becomes less of a problem
with the newer generation.

It seems to clarify the real reason for preferring narrowbodies later in the
article by pointing out that Norwegian would be reasonably confident of
filling a 737 on a Dublin/Stewart route whereas they couldn't guarantee the
same for the larger 787s without excessive price cuts.

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kitsune_
This is just awful. We have 800 gigatons of CO2 emissions left for having a
66% chance of staying under 2 degrees C of warming. We currently emit 40
billion tons of CO2 per year. We need to cut emissions drastically, starting
yesterday.

Frequent flyers emit a disproportional amount of green house gases.

~~~
gaius
Any solution that doesn't involve producing fewer people in the first place is
just window dressing.

~~~
kitsune_
The billions of poor people on this globe have nothing to do with the current
crisis. The vast majority of green house gases have been emitted by countries
with a relatively stagnant population growth curve. The pareto principle
roughly applies here as well.

Here is a conundrum for you: Research shows that an increase in quality of
life is inversely proportional to a drop in birth rate. Fossil fuels are also
the cheapest and easiest way for poor countries to develop their economies.

So if you are truly interested in stopping population growth the solution is
rather simplistic from a carbon budget perspective. Meaning: rich countries
need to drastically reduce their carbon emissions (read: 10% per annum
starting now) while developing countries have a window of maybe 10 years where
they can still increase their carbon emissions. After that they too have to
start reducing emissions (you can think of a scheme where the reduction rate
increases each year).

Put more bluntly: Whenever you take a long haul flight you directly rob a
child in Africa from using fossil fuels to better his or her life.

~~~
the8472
> Research shows that an increase in quality of life is inversely proportional
> to a drop in birth rate. Fossil fuels are also the cheapest and easiest way
> for poor countries to develop their economies.

If decreasing carbon footprint is the goal then presumably the "easiest way"
(spending more carbon) may not be the preferable option.

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akhilcacharya
Would these be the first 737s used for transatlantic in an economy
configuration? JetBlue also plans transatlantic on their new A320Neos.

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mynewtb
Our environment is dying and we celebrate luxury that accelerates it. :(

~~~
Gravityloss
Ah, but I get the benefit of a nice vacation or business trip, while everybody
gets a worse environment.

What's there not to like? After all, if the market doesn't solve something,
there can't be a problem?

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jeffehobbs
Nice

