Norwegian Air to stop flights between USA and Ireland

In as much as I fly Norwegian Air Shuttle quite often, I keep my eyes on their non-stop flights from the west coast. At present, their website lists flights thru April 2020.
Starting in November, Norwegian is discontinuing non-stop service from Oakland, Seattle and Denver.
By April 2020, their non-stop offerings from LAX will be limited to Oslo, London Gatwick, Paris CDG and Barcelona and their SFO service will be only to London Gatwick.
Not a good sign.

Not a good sign.

If cutting unprofitable routes makes the airline more viable, then (paradoxically) it is a good sign. The alternative (such as what happened to WOW) is much worse. Some service is better than none. Their business model just hasn't worked, so they have no choice but to tweak it.

Norwegian said it was due to the ban on flying Boing 737 Super Max.

Blue, NA will be flying SFO - CDG non-stop starting 10/30/19. Their last non-stop flight to/from Oakland ends on 10/24/19 - then they’ll move over to SFO.

I understand from friends that fly NA often, they’ll be moving OAK - ROME to SFO as well.

As someone with two round trip tickets on NA Oakland to Berlin with a flight in 9 days I've been following the airline quite a bit. This move actually seems logical. In the end IMHO for a discount transatlantic airline to work it makes since for it to concentrate on a few profitable routes, do them well and leave it at that. Kind of like Californias In N Out Burger, limited selection, but great value for lovers of simple burgers.

Although given the choice whether to fly out of SFO or OAK to Europe, I much rather prefer OAK, I am still glad that Nor. Air will continue service to Gatwick from SFO and that the SFO to Paris route is in place, likewise with LAX.

rob, i agree with you 100%. Well said.

I dislike OAK intensely, very glad they’re moving to SFO. Just wish they’d done it for my Sept to Oct trip. Oh well, better late than never. Just grateful they’re here at all.

The model of Aer Lingus, Condor, and Icelandair is to broadly serve the USA coast to coast and fly North Americans to a European hub for people to switch to onward travel, and also these airlines code share with American airlines to penetrate the USA better. This model reflects that a large majority of transatlantic travel is North American origin (but I don't know the numbers) and catering to that is key to success.

It remains to be seen whether the Norwegian model, cherry picking a few routes from North American cities that Europeans want to visit and they hope can turn a profit from, and not code sharing-- well, we will see if this is going to work.

For most Americans, Norwegian Airlines does not exist.

Tom, just curious, is it feasible for Americans to fly, say Southwest, to a NA point of origin in the US and then non-stop to London/Paris/Rome/Oslo/Stockholm etc. (if that’s their destination) rather than fly to a European hub on Icelandair/Condor/AerLingus and then fly to their destination? Isn’t it the same thing but in reverse? Just wondering.

Isn’t it the same thing but in reverse

Not on one ticket. I’ve seen Icelandair and Condor codeshare with Alaska and Sun Country, and Aer Lingus codeshare with American Airlines.

Southwest doesn’t codeshare with anybody.

IIRC: there’s a Portland area poster who has flown on a separate ticket to Oakland to catch Norwegian, and an Alabama poster who’s done the same but used Boston. So worthwhile for some it seems.

Norwegian sure has an odd network, but if this topic is telling they have a west coast fan base.

Jetblue and Icelandair codeshare some flights.

If you want an idea of how many planes cross the North Atlantic in one day, here is a video from FlightRadar24 of a 24 hour period. (It will play after the commercial. It's also three years old.) The record is around 2400 planes in a 24 hour period.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/677975/flightradar-24-hours-transatlantic-flight/amp

“Not on one ticket”. Ah, gotcha. Thanks!
Yep, huge fan base here. To fly their amazing planes, non-stop from SFO, at such a rock bottom price is a gift for us out here.

Wow Frank, 100 planes per hour!!

And Midwest one we NA flights Chicago to Barcelona. And
Chicago to Gatwick.