Bjorn Tore Larsen is trying to crack one of the great challenges in aviation: creating a successful low-cost transatlantic airline.
The chief executive of Norwegian start-up Norse Atlantic, which flew the first of its daily services between London Gatwick and New York on Friday, believes enduring demand for travel and a “cautious” approach will help his airline succeed where others have failed and establish a credible rival to dominant carriers like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
“It is definitely very important for us to be conservative, simply because we are already in a business that eats cash if it gets the chance ,” he said. “I would be a fool if I did not admit the aviation or the airline business is a risky business.”
In addition to its service between London and New York, it has plans for a gradual expansion including Berlin to New York and Los Angeles, as well as routes already operating from its home base of Oslo.
Many others have tried and failed to build a successful business on these transatlantic routes, from Freddie Laker’s Skytrain in the 1970s to Iceland’s Wow Air, which collapsed in 2019.
Norse has leased 15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners that used to be flown by Norwegian Air Shuttle, another transatlantic upstart, which expanded rapidly into the long-haul market only to pull out in 2020, struggling under the weight of its own debt.
Norwegian is now a short-haul only airline after a restructuring, but its boom and bust experience has not deterred Larsen. “We are very different. We are a very different company with a very different business model,” he said.
While Norwegian combined long-haul flying with shorter flights within Europe in a complex schedule, Norse will focus only on a few point-to-point routes flown on aircraft leased at attractive rates at the height of the pandemic.
“I know some people say a low-cost long-haul airline does not work, but I would say nobody has tried it, actually,” Larsen said.
“You really haven’t seen a pure, long-haul carrier that has been able to manage the financial cycles of getting cheap, great aircraft . . . at a time where you can have low overhead costs,” he said.
Larsen promised return fares between London and New York from $300, although he said only the cheapest seats would be sold at this price. The airline has targeted profitability in its first full year of operation, 2023, and its fundraising in 2021 was nearly three times oversubscribed.
Still, Larsen, a former shipping executive, is striking out into aviation at a difficult time for the industry. After two years of travel restrictions, the industry is now struggling to cope with labour shortages and passenger numbers.
Larsen said Norse overhired across different jobs, sometimes by around 10 per cent, to give it more resilience to cope with disruption. But the worsening economic outlook raises questions about whether current high levels of demand are sustainable.
Larsen said that rising fuel costs would have to be largely passed on to consumers and that a recession would “of course” hit demand, but that many passengers would ultimately still choose to travel.
“We think travelling is very high on people’s lists . . . I think many people would go for that weekend away, rather than buy a new TV.”
Norse aims to crack challenge of low-cost transatlantic travel & Latest News Update
Norse aims to crack challenge of low-cost transatlantic travel & More Live News
All this news that I have made and shared for you people, you will like it very much and in it we keep bringing topics for you people like every time so that you keep getting news information like trending topics and you It is our goal to be able to get
all kinds of news without going through us so that we can reach you the latest and best news for free so that you can move ahead further by getting the information of that news together with you. Later on, we will continue
to give information about more today world news update types of latest news through posts on our website so that you always keep moving forward in that news and whatever kind of information will be there, it will definitely be conveyed to you people.
Norse aims to crack challenge of low-cost transatlantic travel & More News Today
All this news that I have brought up to you or will be the most different and best news that you people are not going to get anywhere, along with the information Trending News, Breaking News, Health News, Science News, Sports News, Entertainment News, Technology News, Business News, World News of this made available to all of you so that you are always connected with the news, stay ahead in the matter and keep getting today news all types of news for free till today so that you can get the news by getting it. Always take two steps forward
Credit Goes To News Website – This Original Content Owner News Website . This Is Not My Content So If You Want To Read Original Content You Can Follow Below Links