Norwegian plans big boost to Europe-US routes for summer

Norwegian Air plans to boost frequencies on flights between the United States and its most popular European destinations in the 2020 summer season. Among the beneficiaries is Los Angeles-Paris, which moves to double daily flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and 10 frequencies per week,  and New York-Paris, which will now run double daily services on Mondays and Saturdays and nine flights per week. San Francisco-London will also move from five flights per week to a daily service. READ ANA envisages travel without planes. Routes to gain an additional weekly service include Austin-London, Boston-Paris, Denver-London, Los Angeles-Rome, Tampa-London and Fort Lauderdale-Oslo. The airline, which now lays claim to being the biggest foreign carrier serving New York City by passenger numbers,  will consolidate its New York services at John F. Kennedy International Airport for its winter program starting October 27. This will see services to Rome and Barcelona currently operating from Newark move to JFK. “The United States is Norwegian’s key market for long-haul routes and is now the largest market by revenue within our entire network,’’ Norwegian senior vice president Matthew Wood. “Our nonstop routes to Paris, London and Barcelona have been in very high demand by American and European travelers alike, and we continue to bolster capacity to meet the demand. “Paris, in particular, has seen rapid growth in recent years, now served by seven U.S. gateways and we see potential for more. With this expansion, we anticipate a very successful summer 2020.” Norwegian is the world’s fifth-largest low-cost airline and carried over 37 million passengers in 2018. The airline operates more than 500 routes to more than 150 destinations in Europe, North Africa, Middle East, Thailand, North and South America. Norwegian has a fleet of more than 162 aircraft, with an average of 3.8 years. It moved firmly into the spotlight in 2014 with a decision to launch low-cost flights across the Atlantic The airline has struggled financially and was a big operator of the grounded Boeing 737 MAX, with 18 aircraft affected by the grounding. It reported a net profit of 82.8 million Norwegian kroner ($U9.7 million) in its second quarter, down 72 percent from the same period a year ago. However, it noted its underlying operating result before ownership costs was more than 2.3 billion kroner, the highest ever in the second quarter and 1.2 billion kroner higher than last year. Also in July, co-founder Bjorn Kjos stepped down as chief executive 17 years at the carrier's helm.