I saw this article today about a new low cost transatlantic airline. They are called Level and will initially only fly between Barcelona and San Francisco and Oakland.
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/03/17/level-airline/?utm_sourcemedium=Twitter
Very exciting! It's so nice to have low cost options.
Thanks for posting this Stephen, good to know!
I read about these guys but I'm not seeing the same fares for return. Could always pay cash on the outbound and miles back I suppose!
Saw pretty good economy fares from Oakland in the fall. But premium economy was in the same ballpark as BA. And the pictures and reviews indicate a tighter squeeze, and even less pitch in the premium economy. If you are looking for price over comfort I'd continue to watch this one.
LEVEL was established by International Airline Group in response to increased competition in the long-haul market from low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle. Norwegian's really shaking up the industry--especially the big legacy carriers based out of the U.S.
They're starting off with a whopping 2 aircraft.
AIG came out of the merger of British Airways and Iberia (Spain). Their other carriers include budget air carriers Aer Lingus and Vueling so LEVEL may not be small for long.
Why Barcelona? Nice place, but hardly a major European hub. Well, another source points out that IAG, parent of the new Level (plus long-established, Iberia, British Airways, and Aer Lingus) operates its Vueling discount line from Barcelona. It may intend to feed European passengers on Vueling through Level across the Atlantic. This would break the model of the biggest European discounters, Ryanair and easyJet, which don't connect to any other airline flights or even to their own. Vueling already shares flights with Iberia, so trans-Atlantic itineraries seem a good bet – sometime. BA and Aer Lingus already are connected to small discount lines in Europe; Air France and Lufthansa are moving the same way.
But we should curb our enthusiasm about Level on one issue: It only has two airplanes, as pointed out above. One goes out of service, there won't be quick back-up.
Trans-Atlantic travel has come nearly full circle to the days long ago when charter airlines shook up the near-monopolies of the national long-distance carriers. Freddy Laker, the cheery bloke whose scheduled flights at charter prices stirred the pot, would surely be gleeful.
WOW, Icelandair, and Norwegian are claiming slices of the long-haul business for themselves. Air Asia has had similar ambitions in Asia for years now. But it is Norwegian which could produce the next big round when it takes delivery of a big fleet of the new B-737 Max. It intends to fly the narrow-body, fuel-efficient planes across the Atlantic into secondary East Coast markets such as Providence, escaping the hub-and-spoke strategy.
