Norwegian Air's £69 flights to New York are a real game-changer – here's why

Plane Talk: Norwegian's bold move is a huge challenge to established long-haul airlines

Norwegian Air is disrupting long-haul commercial aviation in the same manner that easyJet and Ryanair did for short-haul (Getty)

It’s been a good week for new air routes to places you’ve never heard of. I had to resort to a European road atlas to locate Pardubice - a small city in the centre of the Czech Republic that is soon to find itself connected to London with a Ryanair link from Stansted.

Should your travel plans for the year still have some flexibility, I advise you to try it: the military airfield seeking a new role is on the right side of town for Kutna Hora, a city that grew rich on silver mining and splashed out on a ravishing architectural array of medieval masterpieces.

You will not find such gems if you fly west from Edinburgh this summer with the low-cost airline Norwegian. This week it revealed non-stop transatlantic services from the Scottish capital. From 15 June, you can choose from three possible destinations: Stewart International Airport in New York State, Bradley International Airport in Connecticut and TF Green airport outside Providence, Rhode Island.

Norwegian is building on a business model established by WestJet from Glasgow to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and from Gatwick to St John’s, Newfoundland: flying a Boeing 737 twin-jet across the world’s second-largest ocean. The difference is, according to the airline, is that “the new transatlantic routes will be operated on brand new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

“Norwegian is the European launch customer for this state-of-the-art new aircraft which offers a longer range and greater seat capacity than existing single-aisle aircraft.”

The airline is selling a small number of seats at a loss: the £69 one-way fare that has caught so much attention is £6 less than the amount Norwegian must hand over to the Chancellor in Air Passenger Duty. But to get a better sense of prevailing fares, I priced up a trip leaving Edinburgh on Saturday 5 August, returning a week later.

The outbound fare was £322 one way – not at all bad, but several times the headline figure. Coming back, the fare is £224. At £546 return (plus extra for luggage and meals on board), it’s still an excellent fare. That’s so long as you want to go to upstate New York, or take a 95-minute bus connection to Manhattan from Stewart.

Bradley airport serves Hartford – the insurance capital of the US, from which I suggest you draw your own conclusions about how exciting it might be. But Rhode Island is an adorable little state, and the city of Providence is a smaller, more manageable version of Boston. Before the low-cost giant Southwest started flying to Logan airport in the Massachusetts capital, TF Green airport was the budget gateway to Boston.

Is this a game-changer? I believe it is. Norwegian’s move may not initially worry United too much; the giant US carrier flies from Edinburgh to “real” New York, in the shape of Newark airport, and can also offer connections right across the US and deep into Latin America. But using cheap, efficient planes on 3,000-mile-plus sectors is potentially as much of a disruption to the established long-haul airlines as easyJet and Ryanair have been to European aviation.

You can be certain that efforts will continue by US airlines and unions to block the move by a Norwegian airline from a Scottish airport. But now the no-frills genie is out of the bottle, even a protectionist like Donald Trump will think twice before depriving Americans of cheap access to Scotland and the rest of Europe.

Now, where’s that Rand McNally US road map again?