5 ms·

Yeah, there's a school of thought that competition, fares, and cabin service would all improve on American carriers if we allowed fifth-freedom flights within t

by mherdeg 12y ago

Yeah, there's a school of thought that competition, fares, and cabin service would all improve on American carriers if we allowed fifth-freedom flights within the U.S. Imagine if you could buy a seat on the Qantas 747 JFK-LAX — why would anyone ever prefer AA/B6/DL? On the flip side, things for travelers might also get worse, or even more "low costy", if we had domestic fifth-freedom flights. In order to compete with European low-cost carriers, Lufthansa migrated a lot of their intra-Europe flights to low-cost affiliate Germanwings, whose travelers don't get the same perks or lounge access as people on normal LH flights. This has been kinda a pain. But competition can be good. One nice perk of the Norwegian Air incursion into the transatlantic market has been the ultra-cheap Star Alliance retaliation fares to Northern Europe airports that DY serves. There are some amazing $500–$600 round trip fares from either coast to OSL, and you can turn them into a trip to "anywhere in Europe" by using stopovers wisely. This article mentions that the Azores are another potential hub for low-cost carriers but doesn't mention that SATA (S4) really does publish some dirt cheap fares to Europe, BOS-PDL-LIS at like $300ish round trip, albeit on a sketchy A310 aircraft with low-cost service.

8_hours_ago 12y ago
Can you point me in the direction of the $500–$600 round trip fares from either coast to OSL? Is there a good website to find deals like that?
- brianbreslin 12y ago
  http://www.norwegian.com http://www.norwegian.com has many of them on their site. They ran some $500 round trip from San Francisco to Oslo a few months back and $440 from Ft. Lauderdale.
- scintill76 12y ago
  Here's a JFK/OSL roundtip for $397: https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=JFK;t=OSL;d=2014-11-28;r=2014-12-02;sel=JFKOSL0DY7002,OSLJFK0DY7001 https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=JFK;t=OSL;d=2014-11... (If the link doesn't work, it's an outbound Friday November 28, return Tuesday December 2, on Norwegian 7002 and Norwegian 7001.) This may be a Thanksgiving-related dip that makes it extra-low, but it's not much higher on some other dates nearby. When you go to buy the ticket, the price may not match, so be aware of that. I think it's usually right, though. I bought a similar flight at a similar price, so I can sort of vouch that it's not some garbage quote. Google Flights is pretty good for this, at least if you're willing to tinker with the dates and cities until you find the magic spot. They have a little bar chart of the prices, so you can look at surrounding dates and find better deals. I don't know if I'm just doing it wrong, but the other flight search sites I've tried sometimes can't find the deals on Google, even when I search specifically. Also, consider booking on www.norwegian.no for probably ~$30 savings, but it's only in Norwegian, so if you can't read it confidently, maybe that's a little too crazy.
- mherdeg 12y ago
  Well, the gold standard is to find fares (expertflyer.com will help you out here) then find inventory that matches the fares. United has a live $69 base fare K fare from EWR-OSL; find inventory to match and you're good to go. ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com) will help you do a fairly broad search, like "departure date within 1 month of X day and total journey length Y--Z days." If you don't have the time for that stuff, follow the folks at theflightdeal.com, who as near as I can tell have software scraping fares on a few hundred key routes and make blog posts when they see particularly low fares; see e.g. http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/10/31/united-466-newark-oslo-norway-roundtrip-including-all-taxes/ http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/10/31/united-466-newark-os... . The SFO-OSL $512 fare was posted in March; don't think it's still valid, http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/03/07/united-512-san-francisco-oslo-norway-roundtrip-including-taxes/ http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/03/07/united-512-san-franc... .

by mherdeg 12y ago

8_hours_ago 12y ago

Can you point me in the direction of the $500–$600 round trip fares from either coast to OSL? Is there a good website to find deals like that?

brianbreslin 12y ago
http://www.norwegian.com http://www.norwegian.com has many of them on their site. They ran some $500 round trip from San Francisco to Oslo a few months back and $440 from Ft. Lauderdale.
scintill76 12y ago
Here's a JFK/OSL roundtip for $397: https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=JFK;t=OSL;d=2014-11-28;r=2014-12-02;sel=JFKOSL0DY7002,OSLJFK0DY7001 https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=JFK;t=OSL;d=2014-11... (If the link doesn't work, it's an outbound Friday November 28, return Tuesday December 2, on Norwegian 7002 and Norwegian 7001.) This may be a Thanksgiving-related dip that makes it extra-low, but it's not much higher on some other dates nearby. When you go to buy the ticket, the price may not match, so be aware of that. I think it's usually right, though. I bought a similar flight at a similar price, so I can sort of vouch that it's not some garbage quote. Google Flights is pretty good for this, at least if you're willing to tinker with the dates and cities until you find the magic spot. They have a little bar chart of the prices, so you can look at surrounding dates and find better deals. I don't know if I'm just doing it wrong, but the other flight search sites I've tried sometimes can't find the deals on Google, even when I search specifically. Also, consider booking on www.norwegian.no for probably ~$30 savings, but it's only in Norwegian, so if you can't read it confidently, maybe that's a little too crazy.
mherdeg 12y ago
Well, the gold standard is to find fares (expertflyer.com will help you out here) then find inventory that matches the fares. United has a live $69 base fare K fare from EWR-OSL; find inventory to match and you're good to go. ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com) will help you do a fairly broad search, like "departure date within 1 month of X day and total journey length Y--Z days." If you don't have the time for that stuff, follow the folks at theflightdeal.com, who as near as I can tell have software scraping fares on a few hundred key routes and make blog posts when they see particularly low fares; see e.g. http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/10/31/united-466-newark-oslo-norway-roundtrip-including-all-taxes/ http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/10/31/united-466-newark-os... . The SFO-OSL $512 fare was posted in March; don't think it's still valid, http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/03/07/united-512-san-francisco-oslo-norway-roundtrip-including-taxes/ http://www.theflightdeal.com/2014/03/07/united-512-san-franc... .